How to milk a Cow.

Milking by hand is hard work. The person milking sits on a little stool beside the cow and places a bucket the ground under the udder. You have to get into a rhythum of squeezing and pulling down on the teat with your thumb and fingers. Your hands get very tired and you must aim carefully to squirt the milk into the bucket.

You have to be careful not to let the cow kick the milk the bucket over or your hard work will be wasted!

On farms which don't have dairy cows, the farmily may keep just one cow to milk by hand to provide milk for their own use.

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If the machine pulled on the teat all the time to would hurt the cow. The pump has to also let air into the space between the teat cup and the lining of the teat cup so that the teat is regularly squeezed and relaxed as the milk is being sucked out.

From the teat cups the milk goes into the hose and then into stainless steel pipes which run along the milking shead above or below the cows. These pipes take the milk to be cooled to 4 degrees celsius and it is stored in a big tank which is refrigerated to keep the milk at this temperature. This tank is called the milk vat.