COPPER CONTENT OF MILK FAT

The study was aimed at determining the content of copper in milk fat. Analyses were carried out on fat extracted from non-pasteurised sweet cream obtained from bulk milk. Copper was extracted from fat samples with nitric acid and its content was determined with the method of flameless atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The results obtained indicate that the content of copper in milk fat ranged from 0.010 to 0.089 mg/kg. The average copper content of fat from the summer feeding accounted for 0.037 +/- 0.020 mg/kg, and that of fat from the winter feeding was significantly higher (alpha=0.05) and reached 0.054 +/- 0.021 mg/kg.