Milking Cows

For those of you who don't know I'm the Young Women's president. We have a farming family in our branch and when we asked the girls for activity ideas one of them was to go to the farm and learn how to milk a cow by hand and how milk gets to the stores. I thought I knew how this process went but I have to say I learned a lot. This is me milking a cow. The teats were surprising rough and leather like. Not at all what I thought they would feel like.
Hayden petting a baby cow. The boys had a blast seeing all the cows. Hayden wouldn't touch any of the animals at the fair last year besides the pony he rode so this is a big step for him. Coy, as always, just jumped right in feeding the cows who were a couple of years old.
To my surprise Hayden wanted to do it too. For those of you who know my little Hayden this is a miracle. He is so much like his father it kills me. Grandma Sue tells me stories of how Travis didn't like to get dirty when he was little and Hayden is exactly the same way. I never have to chase him down to wash his hands.
This is the owner of the cows sitting on what I think is a genius chair.

It's strapped to his waist so it automatically falls as you sit exactly where you need it to. So you don't fall and is actually quite sturdy to my surprise. What a time saver.
Coy giving the chair a try.

Hayden also participating.
I know this is a weird picture, but if you look closely at the tail you notice it's skinnier on the bottom half. That is because they put a elastic around it, so it falls off. This way they don't fling manure around or slap you in the face with it. And it doesn't seem to bother them at all. A totally humane way to remove a tail.
So we have all seen this before, the automatic pumps getting the milk out of the utters.

Did you know that cows have four stomachs and that one of them is called the garbage stomach. So if, or I should say when, cows eat something metal or plastic it goes to their garbage stomach and just stays there forever. In fact farmers have them heat a big magnet so that when they do eat metal it will all settle in the middle attracted to the magnet and you don't have to worry so much about a piece of wire puncturing the stomach, or their heart, or lungs.
But what I haven't seen before is this piping system that the pumps hook up to that goes all through the barn. So the milk goes up into these metal pipes to...
this bulb, then it goes in a pipe that cools it so the big tank that holds the milk doesn't have to work so hard to make it really cold.
This is the big tank that hold all the milk. It cools it to the nice cold temperature we all like our milk.
The spout at the bottom, one of the Young Men getting us all a drink. Raw milk, as they call it, taste just like milk from the store. I thought it would be a little different but nope taste like whole milk. Again Hayden was a trooper and even after being in a barn full of manure and cows and seeing the whole process he still tried some. Way to go Hayden.