This week we sit down with one of our neighbors to the north, Dr. Cathy Bauman of Ontario Veterinary College in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Bauman's research focuses on helping producers identify, investigate, and mitigate milk quality issues as efficiently as possible. On this episode, we lay the groundwork for conducting a milk quality investigation on a goat dairy by introducing concepts for identifying a milk quality problem; measurable paramaters for evaluating milk quality (specifically somatic cell count and bacterial counts); general principles governing fluctuations in these numbers as they relate to milk production on a goat dairy; key players to have on your team during an investigation; and finally, Dr. Bauman discusses the relationship between high quality milk and cheese production.  This is part 1 of a 2 part series that delves into a logical step-wise approach to working up milk quality issues on a dairy goat operation. Helpful Links: Small Ruminant Veterinarians of Ontario https://srvo.ca/ Dr. Cathy Bauman - Ontario Veterinary College https://ovc.uoguelph.ca/population-medicine/faculty/Cathy-Bauman American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners - find a vet http://www.aasrp.org/about/find_a_vet.asp This podcast is sponsored by the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners as well as USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agricultural and Food Research Initiative Competitive Program, Antimicrobial Resistance grant # 2020-04197. Questions or comments about today's episode can be directed to [email protected]