Hidden Costs of Waste Milk (part 3)

One of the sneakiest and hardest things to economically quantify when it comes to deciding between waste milk and milk replacer is the presence of bacteria. 

This is one of those things that might appear to not cost you a dime, or it could cost you half of your replacement heifers if something were to go wrong. 

While you likely know if your herd is high risk when you are talking about transferable diseases, (i.e johnes,salmonella, or mycoplasma) it is harder to know when other pathogens are taking a hold on your young calves when you aren’t concerned about the diseases listed.The safest and most effective way to mitigate the risk of transferring diseases is through pasteurization or feeding milk replacer .

Bacteria in waste milk can be one of those things that is always lurking at low levels, and waiting for an opportunity to attack when the time presents itself.

While we can’t forget about the fact that milk replacer feeding equipment can get dirty, milk replacer comes out of a bag clean, which is one box that you can check without having to worry. If you are feeding waste milk, it might be something that needs to be checked weekly, at minimum, to ensure that you aren’t filling your calves up with pathogens that could be slowly chipping away at their immune system. 

For the record, waste milk does not always have a high pathogen load, but the increased risk is there. If pasteurization isn’t feasible or practical, or you have high risk diseases in your herd, you have to weigh the risks and the benefits to your calves, but also your wallet. 

What should bacteria levels be? How do you know if you have dangerous pathogens in your waste milk? How do you make sure you keep your milk and equipment clean?

Bacteria levels should be below 100,000 CFU/mL SPC and below 10,000 CFU/mL of E. coli. If you are constantly running above those levels, it might be important for you to consider switching to milk replacer. Sustained high bacteria levels in the milk is a constant stressor on the calves. If their immune systems are already suppressed with an environmental challenge (i.e a drastic temperature or humidity swing), adding a daily overload of pathogens could be the one thing to put them over the edge and come down with a sickness.

How can you know? Send your milk to the lab! Or learn how to set up a lab at home by following our On Farm Milk Plating Guide They can check many different things, including pathogen type, SPC, and E. coli. The best part is, for regular bacteria counts, you can send a sample with your milk pick up (and while you're at it you should send some colostrum samples too!). Ideally, you would want to take samples from multiple checkpoints to ensure that you can zero in on any problem areas where counts might be higher. 

The last thing to consider is the fact that high bacteria counts lead to scours, scours lead to pneumonia, and pneumonia leads to under performing heifers to replace your current milking herd. Pneumonia is the leading economic sink in the calf industry, it’s no joke!

If you are looking to see if milk replacer that could be a good fit for your calf program, please message us and we can help you find what you and your calves are looking for.