Milk quality encompasses many things including hygiene and bacteria counts, milk storage temperature, mastitis. fat and protein levels and contaminants such antibiotics.

During my nursing training we were taught that your hands hold all manner of organisms. The skin on your palms when viewed under a microscope appears to have mountains and gullies. To a bacteria this is the perfect place to live, they can hide easily in the gullies. It is habit for me to wash my hands frequently and I really feel uncomfortable if they are dirty or contaminated in any way. This stems from my training.

I now have a hand sanitizer at each end of the bales. It is alcohol based and dries very quickly. I use it several times during milking in an attempt to decrease the bacteria on my hands. I also use it after touching any goat that has a sign of mastitis and in wet weather I use it even more often.

The area in which you milk also contains many organisms, any of which can be picked up on your hands, milking cups etc and transferred to the milk. You'll be sick of hearing about my nursing training I know, but the other thing that was drilled into us is that sweeping is not a good idea. It transfers many particles into the air which of course must settle again somewhere, maybe in the milk. I sweep only when the milking is complete. Hosing is preferable as dust is not released into the air.

Bacteria counts seem to be affected by many things. Poor hygiene of course but also a failure in some part of your cleaning procedure. Mine is elevated every time it rains - obviously I am not doing a good enough job of cleaning udders of mud. I have also had elevated counts caused by mastitis in one or more goats although this is debatable.