Information
Our pet milk comes from 3 sources. It comes from our mainstream regular human milk during the heavy milk flow months (march/april til September). It can be from our retail stores that have 4-5 days remaining on the pull date. We pull this milk from the shelves, green it up and freeze it. The last source is "high somatic cell" milk.
We test our does for high white blood cell counts once a week. This can be indicative that they are beginning to fight an infection, or that they are "drying off" in their 2nd or 3rd month of pregnancy. Girls with true mastitis infections are rare. We have consumed this high somatic cell milk every winter for years when our volume dips to where we can't afford to drink mainstream milk on the farm.
Why Green Milk?
The state requires that we tint the milk with green food coloring in order to show it is for animal consumption. This comes from an old law on the books from the early '60s when raw milk was illegal for humans in WA. We have to go through the state legislature to get this changed. Until then, we use Select natural food coloring.