This was brought to you in partnership with Skellerup Dairy
Milking liners can look perfectly sound long after they have stopped performing. Rebecca White, Australasian Sales Manager for Dairy at Skellerup, says the recommended change interval of 2500 milkings is built around the gap between how a liner looks and how it works.
“Two and a half thousand milkings is the golden rule of when you should be changing liners,” she says.
“Out past two and a half thousand milkings, we start to see liners deteriorate and become less effective, and that has a negative impact on milk yield and cow health.”
She says during a liner’s lifespan of two and a half thousand milkings, it pulsates, or opens and closes, about two million times.
“You can imagine that many times under the pulsation of a vacuum, rubber starts to get worn out – it loses its elasticity and tension, and that leads to misshapen liners.”
As it wears, a liner can stretch by about 3% and no longer milks the cow out cleanly, and the inside of the barrel develops micro-cracks and pits that trap bacteria, the wash cycle cannot shift.
“It’s a bit like having a stone in your shoe; it’s a bit uncomfortable, and you don’t really want to walk on that part of your shoe.
“That’s what it’s like for a cow.”
She says a cow producing 414kg of milk solids a year can lose about eight kilograms of that to worn liners.
“Multiply that by the milk price, that’s about $74 a cow.
“If you’ve got an average herd in New Zealand, which is 450 cows, across a year, that’s about $33,000 worth of lost milk.”
A full shed of new liners costs about $1,200, against that $33,000.
“Liners retail in your merchants for around $35 to $40 a set.
“So you’re looking at about $1,200 to change a shed lot of liners for your average dairy shed.”
The other cost is udder health.
“You see that cows get the hyperkeratosis, with the keratin accumulating at the teat end, so you get the rough teat ends and the ringing.
“That all increases somatic cell counts.”
Keeping track across a busy season is the challenge. A liner change calculator on the Skellerup website lets farmers set their next change date at the start of the season.
“Get online, punch in your numbers, have a look at when the date is and mark that on your calendar.”
Learn more about milking liner performance and recommended change intervals at skellerup.com, or book your free dairy shed rubberware review through your local rural supply store or via skellerup.com, and leave it to Skellerup’s Dairy Technical Specialists to ensure your dairy rubberware is performing at its full potential.
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