Bulk tank pickup data

Definition

Bulk tank pickup data is the record made each time a hauler collects milk from a farm’s tank (or a tanker loaded directly from the parlor). It is the basis for milk pay and for regulatory quality grading. A pickup (load) record usually holds:

Date and time, farm/tank, hauler and destination plant.
Milk weight (lb), from a tank stick reading and calibration chart, a meter, or the plant’s scale.
Milk temperature at pickup.
A sample, tested by a lab for fat %, protein %, other solids %, SCC (often in thousands per mL), bacteria count (standard plate count, SPC, cfu/mL) and drug residues.

Dumped or rejected milk (antibiotic-positive, off-temperature or otherwise not accepted) is tracked separately. It is not part of shipped milk and must not be mixed into shipped totals or weighted tests.

Pickup data is the shipped view of production. It does not match parlor-meter or DHI test-day totals, because of withheld milk (fresh and treated cows), milk fed to calves, meter error and timing.

Formula

Aggregate a period’s loads by weighting each load i by its milk weight M:

total milk lb    = Σ M_i
fat lb           = Σ (M_i × fat%_i / 100)
fat % (period)   = fat lb / total milk lb × 100     (same for protein, other solids)
SCC (period)     = Σ (SCC_i × M_i) / Σ M_i
milk per cow/day = total milk lb / (days × average cows milking)

\text{fat\%} = \frac{\sum_i M_i\,\text{fat\%}_i}{\sum_i M_i}, \qquad
\mathrm{SCC} = \frac{\sum_i \mathrm{SCC}_i\,M_i}{\sum_i M_i}

Exclude dumped loads from all of these, and report them on their own line (lb dumped, number of loads).

How to pull it in DC305

Pickup data is not in DC305. It comes from the milk buyer, co-op, hauler or plant: a producer portal, a daily or monthly statement, or a data feed. DC305 holds cow-level test-day data (see Milk components and Somatic cell count).

To reconcile the two, line up the same dates and compute:

shipped vs metered (%) = shipped milk lb / parlor-meter milk lb × 100

Use DC305 cow counts (e.g. COUNT FOR LACT>0 plus the herd’s milking-cow filter) for the per-cow denominator. The milking-cow filter and pen exclusions vary by herd; check the herd’s private dc305-vocab mapping.

Typical range

Herd context: US Holsteins, freestall or dry-lot, Grade “A” milk, picked up one or more times a day.

Measure	Typical / limit
PMO bacteria limit (individual producer raw milk, before commingling)	100,000 /mL
PMO bacteria limit (commingled raw milk, before pasteurization)	300,000 /mL
Good SPC	< 10,000 cfu/mL
PMO SCC limit (individual producer, cow milk)	750,000 cells/mL
Milk cooling	≤ 50 °F (10 °C) within 4 h of starting milking, then ≤ 45 °F (7 °C) within 2 more hours; blend after later milkings ≤ 50 °F
Shipped ÷ parlor-meter milk	about 95–102%

PMO limits are from the 2025 PMO Revision, Section 7, Table 1 (as of November 2026). Two of the last four results over a standard trigger a written notice; three of the last five trigger permit suspension (Section 6).

Component and SCC ranges are on the Milk components and Somatic cell count pages.

Common mistakes

Simple-averaging load tests. The average of load fat % or SCC is wrong when load sizes differ. Weight by milk lb.
Reporting a single pickup as the herd value. One load’s SCC or fat test is noisy; use the weighted period value.
Mixing fractions and percents. Some feeds report fat as 0.038, others as 3.8; some report SCC in cells/mL, others in thousands.
Including dumped milk. Dumped loads belong on their own line, not in shipped totals or weighted tests.
Double-counting split loads. One pickup split across tanker compartments or tanks can appear as several rows; check before summing.
Assigning loads to the wrong day. Overnight or early-morning pickups can land on the next calendar date; define the day boundary before computing daily milk.
Expecting shipped milk to match DHI or meter milk. They measure different things.