Over-sized liners could be causing teat damage

摘要

US genetics has tended to breed narrower and particularly shorter teats on our cows and liner sizes have simply failed to keep up with the trend."There is a mismatch between liner size and teat size and it appears to be a growing problem," said vet James Allcock from Lambert, Leonard and May."This results in high mouthpiece vacuums and I believe up to one-third of all north-west dairy farms may suffer from this mismatch."Speaking at the National Herdsmans Conference, he said: "Instead of the low vacuum of 5-10kPa at the mouthpiece of the liner, we are seeing vacuums in excess of 25kPa, and even in some cases towards the full system vacuum of about 40kPa."