Journal of Biology and Nature

Production of clean and safe milk is the fundamental objective of dairy farming. Since most dairy farmers in India practice hand milking and usually moisten the teats prior to milking, the present study was aimed to assess the effect of different pre-hand milking treatments (dry hand, tap water, mustard oil, and coconut oil) on the viable count of different physiological groups of bacteria in raw milk of cross-bred cows. Present experiment was concluded with inference that the T₃ (dry hand) is the best pre-hand milking treatment to obtain low bacterial count in milk pertaining to Lactic Acid Bacterial Count, Lipolytic Bacterial Count and Proteolytic Bacterial Count except coliform followed by T₂ (use of mustard oil), T₁ (coconut oil) and T₀ (tap water) whereas in case of PBC (10²) T₂ (mustard oil) was found best compared to remaining pre-hand milking treatments. Therefore, use of dry hand milking and application of mustard oil udder prior to hand milking may be recommended to the dairy farmers to produce milk of lower bacterial count in different physiological groups of bacteria.