Definitions:
13) Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP)
Ufas definitions:
Additives
Approved Suppliers
Batch
Carry-over
Complementary feeds
Complete feeds
Compound feed
Dairy farming is a class of agricultural, or an animal husbandry, enterprise, for long-term production of milk, usually from dairy cows but also from goats and sheep, which may be either processed on-site or transported to a dairy factory for processing and eventual retail sale.
Most dairy farms sell the male calves born by their cows, usually for veal production, or breeding depending on quality of the bull calf, rather than raising non-milk-producing stock. Many dairy farms also grow their own feed, typically including corn, grass, and hay. This is fed directly to the cows, or is stored as silage for use during the winter season.
Modern dairy farmers use milking machines and sophisticated plumbing systems to harvest and store the milk from the cows, which are usually milked two or three times daily. During the summer months, cows may be turned out to graze in pastures, both day and night, and are brought into the barn to be milked.
Barns may also incorporate tunnel ventilation into the architecture of the barn structure. This ventilation system is highly efficient and involves opening both ends of the structure allowing cool air to blow through the building. Farmers with this type of structure keep cows inside during the summer months to prevent sunburn and damage to udders. During the winter months the cows may be kept in the barn, which is warmed by their collective body heat. Even in winter, the heat produced by the cattle requires the barns to be ventilated for cooling purposes. Many modern facilities, and particularly those in tropical areas, keep all animals inside at all times to facilitate herd management.
3) Dairy Farming Market
There is a great deal of variation in the pattern of dairy production worldwide. Many countries which are large producers consume most of this internally, while others (in particular New Zealand), export a large percentage of their production. Internal consumption is often in the form of liquid milk, while the bulk of international trade is in processed dairy products such as milk powder.
Worldwide, the largest producer is India, the largest exporter is New Zealand, and the largest importer is Japan.
The European Union is the largest milk producer in the world, with 143.7 million tonnes in 2003. This data, encompassing the present 25 member countries, can be further broken down into the production of the original 15 member countries, with 122 million tonnes, and the new 10 mainly former Eastern European countries with 21.7 million tonnes.
Dairy production is heavily distorted due to the Common Agricultural Policy—being subsidized in some areas, and subject to production quotas in other.
Most milk-consuming countries have a local dairy farming industry, and most producing countries maintain significant subsidies and trade barriers to protect domestic producers from foreign competition, but New Zealand, the largest dairy exporting country, does not apply any subsidies to dairy production.
The milking of cows was traditionally a labor-intensive operation and still is in less developed countries. Small farms need several people to milk and care for only a few dozen cows, though for many farms these employees have traditionally been the children of the farm family, giving rise to the term "family farm".
Advances in technology have mostly led to the radical redefinition of "family farms" in industrialized countries such as the United States. With farms of hundreds of cows producing large volumes of milk, the larger and more efficient dairy farms are more able to weather severe changes in milk price and operate profitably, while "traditional" very small farms generally do not have the equity or cash flow to do so. The common public perception of large corporate farms supplanting smaller ones is generally a misconception, as many small family farms expand to take advantage of economies of scale, and incorporate the business to limit the legal liabilities of the owners and simplify such things as tax management.
Before large scale mechanization arrived in the 1950s, keeping a dozen milk cows for the sale of milk was profitable. Now most dairies must have more than one hundred cows being milked at a time in order to be profitable, with other cows and heifers waiting to be "freshened" to join the milking herd . In New Zealand the average herd size, depending on the region, is about 350 cows.
Herd size in the US varies between 1,200 on the West Coast and Southwest, where large farms are commonplace, to roughly 50 in the Northeast, where land-base is a significant limiting factor to herd size. The average herd size in the U.S. is about one hundred cows per farm.
Currently, concerns regarding monopolies created by Dean Foods, Kraft, and other major buyers of bulk dairy products on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange have been raised, as American dairy farms have suffered extreme price depression and chaotic fluctuations while processors and retailers report record profits. The same has happened in the UK due to the price of milk being fixed by supermarkets. Many theorize that unregulated imports of milk protein concentrate used by processors to boost cheese yield has artificially and unfairly influenced the markets in an effort to force consolidation and vertical integration in what has historically been a highly diversified industry.
Dairy products are generally defined as foods produced from cow's or domestic buffalo's milk. They are usually high-energy-yielding food products. A production plant for such processing is called a dairy or a dairy factory. Raw milk for processing comes mainly from cows, and, to a lesser extent, from other mammals such as goats, sheep, yaks, camels, or horses. Dairy products are commonly found in European, Middle Eastern and Indian cuisine, whereas they are almost unknown in East Asian cuisine.
Milk after optional homogenization, pasteurization, in several grades after standardization of the fat level, and possible addition of bacteria Streptococcus lactis and Leuconostoc citrovorum.
- Crème fraîche, slightly fermented cream
- Smetana, Central and Eastern European variety of sour cream
- Clotted cream, thick spoonable cream made by heating
- Cultured buttermilk, fermented concentrated (water removed) milk using the same bacteria as sour cream
- Kefir, fermented milk resembling buttermilk but based on different yeast and bacteria culture
- Kumis/Airag, slightly fermented mares' milk popular in Central Asia
- Milk powder (or powdered milk), produced by removing the water from milk
- Whole milk products
- Buttermilk products
- Skim milk
- Ice Cream
- High milk-fat & nutritional products (for infant formulas)
- Cultured and confectionery products
- Condensed milk, milk which has been concentrated by evaporation, often with sugar added for longer life in an opened can
- Evaporated milk, (less concentrated than condensed) milk without added sugar.
- Infant formula, dried milk powder with specific additives for feeding human infants
- Baked milk, a variety of boiled milk that has been particularly popular in Russia
- Butter, mostly milk fat, produced by churning cream
- Buttermilk, the liquid left over after producing butter from cream, often dried as livestock food
- Ghee, clarified butter, by gentle heating of butter and removal of the solid matter
- Smen, a fermented clarified butter used in Moroccan cooking.
- Anhydrous milkfat
- Cheese, produced by coagulating milk, separating from whey and letting it ripen, generally with bacteria and sometimes also with certain molds Curds, the soft curdled part of milk (or skim milk) used to make cheese (or casein)
- Paneer
- Whey, the liquid drained from curds and used for further processing or as a livestock food
- Cottage cheese
- Cream cheese, produced by the addition of cream to milk and then curdled to form a rich curd or cheese made from skim milk with cream added to the curd
- Fromage frais
- Yogurt, milk fermented by Streptococcus salivarius ssp. thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii ssp. bulgaricus.
Dairy cattle (dairy cows) are cattle cows (adult females) bred for the ability to produce large quantities of milk, from which dairy products are made. Dairy cows generally are of the species Bos taurus.
Historically, there was little distinction between dairy cattle and beef cattle, with the same stock often being used for both meat and milk production. Today, the bovine industry is more specialized and most dairy cattle have been bred to produce large volumes of milk. The United States dairy herd produced 83.9 billion kg (185 billion lbs) of milk in 2007, up from 52.6 billion kg (116 billion lbs) in 1950. Yet there are more than 9 million cows on U.S. dairy farms—about 13 million fewer than there were in 1950.
This is quoted as Mega joules per kilogram of dry matter.
It is a measure of the useful energy in a feed, representing that portion of the feed gross energy not lost in the faeces, urine and eructated gas.
It is also the energy that is not lost through the kidneys in the urine, and which is available and used by the tissues.
Can also be referred to as the "digestible energy" (DE) less the energy lost as methane from the rumen and energy lost in urine by ruminant animals.
10) Dry Matter (%)
The dry matter (also known as dry weight) is a measurement of the mass of something when completely dried (i.e. after removal of the moisture).
Dry matter includes proteins, milk fat, milk sugars and minerals.
Feed free of moisture or 100% DM. Feeds are expressed on a DM basis due to the large variation in moisture or DM content of feeds fed to cattle.
Compound feeds are feedstuffs that are blended from various raw materials and additives. These blends are formulated according to the specific requirements of the target animal (e.g. a dairy cow). They are manufactured by feed compounders as meal type, pellets or crumbles.
Compound feeds can be complete feeds that provide all the daily required nutrients, concentrates that provide a part of the ration (protein, energy) or supplements that only provide additional micronutrients, such as minerals and vitamins.
Ufas definition: "mixtures of products of vegetable or animal origin in their natural state, fresh or preserved, or products derived from the industrial processing thereof, or organic or inorganic substances, whether or not containing additives, for oral animal feeding in the form of complete feed or complementary feeds."
The job of the feed manufacturer is to buy the commodities and blend them in the feed mill according to the specifications outlined by the nutritionist. There is little room for error because, if the ration is not apportioned correctly, lowered animal production and diminished outward appearance can occur.
13) Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP)
HACCP is a systematic preventive approach to food safety and pharmaceutical safety that addresses physical, chemical, and biological hazards as a means of prevention rather than finished product inspection. HACCP is used in the food industry to identify potential food safety hazards, so that key actions can be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk of the hazards being realized.
14) Feeding Milking Cows
Lactating dairy cows must consume large quantities of dry matter (DM) to provide the nutrients necessary to maintain high levels of milk production. The consequences of low dry matter intake include lower peak milk yield, lower total milk production, excessive body weight loss and consequently poor reproductive performance.
Dry matter intake (DMI) in the autumn calved cow is a function of both animal and feed factors as well as management. A number of factors affect dry matter intake including forage quality, diet specification, feeding facilities, diet palatability, dry matter of the feed, environmental stress as well as general management factors. This paper will outline the main drivers of intake in the dairy cow.
15) Forage type
High quality forages support higher DMI than lower quality forages. Low quality forages are digested slowly and remain in the rumen for longer periods, limiting rumen capacity. Allocation of a greater proportion of concentrates in the diet may partially compensate for low quality forage but there is a limit to this as the cow needs a minimum roughage of at least 40% of DMI as forage. This is necessary to maintain a healthy rumen. The addition of a second forage such as maize or whole crop will have the effect of stimulating intake. Moorepark research has shown improvements in intake of 2.5 – 3.0 kg DM from the inclusion of a second forage. However, the gain from a third forage in the diet is limited and not likely to be worth the additional complication in the feeding system. For drier parts of the country with a very long grazing season, the second forage could be grazed grass.
Ufas definitions