Summer Reading - Cows

As I mentioned in my previous Summer Reading post, we are studying about animals and where things come from.  To follow up on our lesson, Hooray for Dairy Farming we actually visited one.  We first read these two books that told us exactly how the milk gets from the cow to the store.


Then we visited an actual dairy farm.  It was really cool to see what we saw pictured in the book actually happening in real life.

First they bring the cows to the milking barn, or whatever you call that building.  They must be milked twice a day or the udder will become sore and swollen.

Then they bring the cows into the milking area.

They hook them up to a milking machine.  The pump sucks the milk through the rubber-lined cups.  Once they reach a certain amount of milk they automatically pop off. It actually doesn't take very long.  

Gess thought it was pretty cool.

The milking machine is connected to a large tank in another room which is where they store the milk from all the cows.

A truck will then arrive and transfer the milk to a local bottling plant where it will be standardized, pasteurized, homogenized, packaged and shipped to the store.