A Girl and Her Cat: How Now Brown Cow

Today was a field trip to Birch Circle Dairy Farm. You'll have to excuse me if I don't have as much to say about it as I usually do, but waking up at 5am does not agree with me. I may be scarred for life.

We got to the farm just before 2pm and spent about 90 minutes touring the buildings and playing with the cows.

Those are Brown Swiss cows (they make chocolate milk....really.)
The dairy also had some holsteins and a few jerseys, though it was the brown swiss who really got up close and friendly with us.

After some "petting zoo" time, we headed over to the milking parlour and divided into groups of six. Each group got twelve cows to milk.

Milking a cow is quite a ritualistic process. In order for a cow to milk well, she must be relaxed and comfortable. This causes release of oxytocin which prompts the milk alveoli to relax, letting the milk flow. If a cow is stressed or nervous, adrenaline will be released, causing the alveoli to cramp and tighten. In order to get the highest milk yield, a dairy farmer has to pamper his cows a little.

So.

First, soothing music is piped into the parlour. Now, this being the middle of BFE, they have a choice of an oldies station or mariachi. The cows seem to prefer the oldies so we did our milking to "Ain't Nothin But a Hound Dog".
Next, we used warm water to spray off the udders. This removes all the dirt and manure, as well as providing a gentle massage to the udder. Once the area was totally clean we massaged it with a warm towel soaked in an iodine solution, both to disinfect and to calm the cow down more. Once she was suitably clean and pampered we grabbed the "claw" (the milking machine) and hooked her up. The machine is a lot like a vacuum cleaner hose with 4 ends, each of which fits snugly over a teat. Once it's attached, it will stay on until the cow has been milked dry. Once it comes off, the teats are dipped into an iodine solution with an oil base in order to keep any bacteria from getting into the nipple while it's still open from milking. We finished our 12 cows in about 20 minutes, even with one slightly grumpy client (she whipped Alona in the face with a manure-coated tail...lovely).