Relatório final de atividades de estágio curricular supervisionado: assistência técnica e qualidade do leite

Abstract

Brazilian agricultural production overcomes numerous challenges every year to continue generating food, employment, and income for the country. With an estimated production of 35 billion liters per year, this activity directly employs approximately 4 million people and helps sustain rural families. Since the majority of dairy cattle farming is pasture-based, it is vulnerable to climate changes and seasonal variations in production due to low rainfall during the dry season, leading to a consequent drop in production. On farms that do not have any drought management plans, this decline is even more pronounced. To overcome the challenges of producing milk in semi-arid regions, the use of zootechnical technologies is necessary, where an animal scientist is indispensable in contributing knowledge through technical assistance to align all key aspects of production and fully realize the potential of these farms. Around 30 dairy farms were assisted to monitor the quality of the milk supplied to the CLAN dairy through physicochemical analyses such as fat content, acidity, cryoscopy, density, temperature, and contaminants. Alongside the diagnostic assessments conducted on the farms based on the supplier qualification plan, the internship aimed to evaluate the heterogeneity of the dairy's partner farms, understanding their differences and promoting improvements to enhance milk production on these properties. In summary, it is evident that the level of technical knowledge applied on the surveyed farms is still low, as basic issues such as forage planning were found in only about 20% of the farms, the use of health monitoring techniques like CMT (California Mastitis Test) in just over 40%, and 38.5% of the farms did not have facilities that ensure animal welfare.