‘Podolian’ cattle: quanti-qualitative production of the milk in cows machine milked

The purpose of the work was to detect the milk yield and milk composition in Autochthonous Italian Grey Cattle (ex Podolian) machine milked. The ‘Podolian’ breed derived from Bos primigenius primigenius (Aurochs) of the Near East with possible introgression from indigenous Aurochsen of Middle Southern Italy. Milk production was detected in a population of 97 cows of 'Masseria Colombo' farm. The milking technique adopted contemplates that, for around 8 months, after the machine milking of the morning, the calf remains with its mother for about 7-8 h. Therefore, the milk yield is referred to a single milking\day. The first recording data was carried out in May 2010 and the last one in January 2011. The attitude to machine milking was good. As expected, the individual milk yield, on average, increased with the parity order reaching in the third order: kg 213 ± 50 at 30 days, kg 421 ± 94 at 2 months, kg 609 ± 116 at 3 months and kg 1,215 ± 186 at 7 months (P <0.05-0.001) with extreme values of minimum kg 1,011 and maximum kg 1,595 at this latter age. In the milk at 210 days, independently of the parity order, the percentage was, on average, 4.10 for fat, 3.90 for protein, 3.05 for casein (78% of the total protein) and 4.97 for lactose. In almost all controls somatic cells were lower than 300,000. In conclusion, the 'Podolian' genetic type subjected to machine milking showed: (i) a milk yield of remarkable interest; (ii) a composition particularly suitable for cheese-making in order to obtain high quality dairy products, as already widely known. Finally the cows showed a behaviour that we can define of 'good' answer or adaptability to the machine milking.