Opinion: The horror day we put more than milk in the vat

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Opinion: The Country's executive producer Rowena Duncum looks back on a fateful day on the Taranaki farm.

I'll never forget the day we accidentally put penicillin milk in the vat – the kind of thing you think won't happen to you.

It had been a pretty good start to our first season contract milking in Taranaki.

We'd arrived on farm on a gorgeous, sunny June day with blue skies and clear views across lush green paddocks towards Mount Taranaki.

Fast forward a couple of months to the thick of calving.

My first indication something was wrong was finding my partner at home, frantically looking through the phone book.

To this day, I don't know what he expected to find in the yellow pages.

"I forgot to turn the taps for the peno mob," he finally managed to spit out.

I immediately envisaged contamination of the whole tanker and having to apologise to our co-op and the other farmers on our collection route.

I managed to prise the phone book out of his hands, and we swung into action.

He'd already had the presence of mind to throw the red vat lock on, so the tanker wasn't actually in any danger of being contaminated.

We rang the team at FMG, who deal with these kinds of calls all the time. They were calm and reassuring and let us know the next steps.

We were advised to let our farm owner know and any other staff who were on farm that day, so everyone was on the same page.

From there it was a quick call to our local QCONZ rep to find out where they were that morning, before loading up a milk jug from the vat and driving it about 10 minutes away for testing.

Thankfully our milk passed and we were able to have it collected and processed as normal. Every year nearly 1000 people aren't so lucky.

During that initial call, FMG congratulated us for having the presence of mind to call them – a lot of farmers assume the worst and dump their milk before investigating if the antibiotic residue has made it into the vat or not.

The best way to learn is from mistakes, and we now know there are easy ways to prevent ending up in that situation.

Two-thirds of FMG's milk claims are similar to ours - contamination of the milk. This can be through antibiotic milk entering the vat, wash water in the vat or from a milking plant failure.

Claims peak early in the season, when mastitis and antibiotic use are most frequent.

New and inexperienced staff can feel overwhelmed leading into their first calving, so it's important to take them through DairyNZ's "MRS T" process a few times before the busy season kicks in:

• Mark when a cow needs antibiotic treatment
• Record the cow's number and treatment details
• Separate from the milking herd
• Treat

As over 10 per cent of claims are related to loss of power, investing in a generator is a good idea. Power failure can have a major impact on a farm's ability to milk and refrigerate milk at the required temperature.

So a contingency plan, including back-up power, helps minimise disruption during the season.

FMG has found chiller failure claims peak in early summer, when the combination of near-full vats and higher air temperatures put chillers under extreme pressure.

It's simple to reduce the stress on chillers by making sure they're insulated.

FMG also has some free-to-order handy safety stickers for things like remembering to switch on the vat.

Finally, there's an easy-to-follow guide to all things milk-claim related on the advice section of the FMG website as well.