Nervous about cows milk and mastisits

Hi all

We are about to move onto 4 acres in Mahana, in Tasman,Nelson and are looking at getting a couple of cows - hubby makes great cheese already so this seems a logical progression. However, the lifestyle cow we get our milk from at present (not ours) may have sub-clinical mastitis so my question is, will the milk hurt us? Cow isn't having antibiotics yet, but supply to us has been halted till this is well sorted. Will it affect the cheese? (hard cheese, nothing soft). I freeze the milk and bring it out as needed but I notice it is forming chunks on top which don't blend back in and the bottle doesn't last long before I have to throw the rest away. We have had milk from another source in the past and this didn't happen - frozen milk came back like fresh and lasted several days.

We drank the milk from a sub-clinically infected cow all through one season. Stephan made a freezer full of mozzarella with it, which we're still eating (that was all he knew how to make in that first year). The milk was fine and so were we.

Will the mastitis affect the cheese? It obviously affects the constituency of the milk, so it could do. Whichever antibiotics are used will have withholding periods on them. Whether remaining residues (if there are any) would affect cheese or not is not my area of expertise.

We have to wash udders with antiseptic in the water to prevent the cows being infected by the milker, which appears to be how the mastitis originated in two previous seasons. It might be worth checking what's going on with the cow and milker where your milk is coming from. A housecow with mastitis is a problem.

I would suspect ..... most definitely. The bugs that cause the mastitis are living off the milk rather than the udder. It is "sub-clinical" because there is not enough bug growth to make the cow sick. If the antibiotics cure the subclinical infection, and after all the antibiotics have gone from out of her system in whatever the withholding period for cheese that the antibiotic has, then the milk will be fine for cheese. The milk is likely to be fine for drinking about a week or so before cheese, but if you are allergic to antibiotics, be very careful drinking milk that is still within the withholding period.

''may have subclinical mastitis''? She either does or she doesn't and it is relatively simple to tell.

Antibiotics will affect cheese making - any antibiotic present in the milk will probably kill your cheese culture. Stick to the treatment instructions and the milk withholding and these issues should be managed.

mastitis does effect the composition of milk

personally i don't 'do'' subclin mastitis milk. I am all for drinking milk without bacteria or pus cells in it!