Cleaning Milk Collection Container, Spare Trailer Tyre

Good day for young mothers. Two new calves across the river, almost 30% of the 25 have calved. Up on the hill out of 16 we have 9 new babies with the new one today. On the river out of 7 expectant mothers 5 have calved counting the new one this morning. The new one on the river almost looked liked it may be orphaned. The mother hadn't licked it clean and for a while there wasn't all that much interest. We checked it several times during the day hoping we didn't have to drive them into a neighbours yards for a bit of force feeding but by the end of the day all seemed reasonably well. Will monitor this one for a while.

We had a busy day going into Dungog to repair a tyre for the trailer and using the trip to visit the Op Shop, Dump Shop, Produce Merchant, Library and nursery whilst the tyre was being repaired. We are looking at building an egg incubator and were perusing the recycling places for some components. Picked up another spare tyre and rim for the trailer at the dump for $5. It was in the same condition as the one being repaired. The repair cost $22.

$22 Puncture Repair

$5 Recycled

 A busy finish to the day putting out silage across the river and ear tagging 2 new calves before collecting some oysters at Karuah. Had a long chat with the two oyster farmers about a recent conference they attended. A lot of changes in the industry with tradition making way for more efficient growing and harvesting techniques. The worst news was the move to breeding disease resistant varieties and rather than gathering naturally spawned stock the move is to breed stock for supply to the farmers which could result in a reduction in genetic diversity. Our farmers plan to stick to the traditional methods as it is lower in cost and although harder work quite profitable.

After collecting oysters there was a stop off at the dairy farm for milk which brings us to the title of this blog. The container for milk collection is a food grade 20 litre plastic drum. After emptying the milk into a 25 litre stainless steel pot the cleaning method is as follows.

Rinse the drum with cold water until the water runs clean.
Put in a couple of litres of hot water and a little detergent.
Shake vigorously and empty out the soapy water.
Rinse again with cold water until all the suds are gone.
Leave about half a litre of cold water in the drum.
Put in about a tablespoon of Sodium Metabisulphite and shake.
Store container and just rinse out before use.

Since using this cleaning technique there have had no contamination issues and the process is exceedingly fast.