This qualification is for people who manage the maintenance of milk quality when supervising the milking of dairy cows.

Holders of this qualification will have knowledge of milk cooling and milk cooler hygiene checking, and management practices to ensure milk quality; the relationship between milking machine maintenance and faults, and dairy cattle treatment products, and milk quality; the evaluation and monitoring of on-farm milking plant cleaning procedures; and mastitis management using the SAMM plan. They will have the skills to manage the implications of contaminated milk, develop milking plant cleaning procedures, and complete dairy cattle treatment records.

This qualification shares standards with, and can build on, the National Certificate in On-farm Milk Quality (Milk Harvester) [Ref: 1350].

The optional Mastitis Management strand builds on the skills contained in the compulsory section of this qualification. Holders of the stranded qualification will have the skills to develop action plans to manage mastitis on-farm. They will also be able to implement and monitor a mastitis action plan, make adjustments to a plan when necessary as a result of monitoring, and will be able to develop procedure documents for on-farm mastitis management.

On completion of this qualification people can progress to one or more of: the National Certificate in Agriculture (Level 4) with strands in Arable Farming, Cattle Farming, Dairy Farming, Deer Farming, and Sheep Farming [Ref: 0986]; National Certificate in Agriculture (Production Management) with strands in Arable Farming, Cattle Farming, Dairy Farming, Deer Farming, and Sheep Farming [Ref: 1188]; the National Certificate in Agribusiness Management (Agribusiness Resource Management) [Ref: 1187]; the National Certificate in Agribusiness Management (Business Planning and Financial Management) [Ref: 1186]; and the National Diploma in Agribusiness Management [Ref: 0647].