Milk

The other night I went into Jack's room after he was asleep and there was a sippy cup half full of milk still there that Jack had not finished.  I wondered if it was too late to put it in the fridge again. And then I wondered if that was cheap of me. I pictured myself throwing it away and then thought about the cow.  Now when the daycare ladies waste MY milk, the milk I worked so hard to create, I get a little testy.  I wondered if the cow would be annoyed if she knew I was tossing these four ounces of milk.  That made me wonder how much milk a dairy cow produces in a day.  I thought of looking it up on wikipedia, but by the time I was finished doing the dishes, getting James's bottles ready for the next day, taking a shower, etc. I'd forgotten about the cow.

Until last night.  Last night we watched one of the episodes of Modern Marvels that we'd instructed our DVR to record from the History Channel. It was about MILK.

As I watched the show, which focused primarily on dairy cows, milk production plants and other milk-related things, I felt a great affinity for the cows. They seemed almost joyful as they headed to the milking machines.  These ladies were my sisters.

Much of the milking machine process was automated, and it took less than 10 minutes to milk the cow.  At the big farms cows were milked twice a day.

I was sad, though, to hear that their babies were taken away from the cows when the babies were just an hour old. The babies were then bottle-fed.  This was done so that the bacteria in the baby's mouth wouldn't contaminate the udder and the milk.

Holstein cows -- the best milk producing cows according to the History Channel program -- produce 10 gallons a day.  That's a lot of milk.

Your average lactating human woman produces 2 pounds of milk per day, according to the program.  When I was exclusively pumping, at my peak I pumped 31 ounces a day, which would seem like it was probably around 2 pounds.  If you've ever exclusively pumped, you know how challenging it can be to get and keep that supply up there.  But the dairy cows seem to have no problem with this.

Indeed, they are treated quite well.  The farmers interviewed said the treatment of the cows has a direct correlation to the amount of milk they produce.  So they are fed the best diets and live a life of ease.  They like their routines, the farmers said.

Oh, another interesting fact.  The program said 99 percent of dairy farms are family owned.  That's a nice thing to hear in this age of mega corporations taking over farms.

So with all the milk the typical cow produces, my cow would not care about the 4 ounces that I tossed (or rather that I left on the hall table and forgot about until it was too late).  Her milk was actually mixed with the milk of so many other cows and transported via a tanker truck to a milk processing plant where it was pasteurized (heated to 162 degrees) and homogenized. By pasteurizing milk, much of the milk-carried  food born illness has been eliminated.

It made me think of how, when I am getting too ahead of James's intake so that some milk may go bad before he drinks it, I pour my own freshly pumped milk into a sauce pan and scald it before I cool and freeze it.  I have to do this because my milk has a very short shelf life.  If I just freeze it without scalding first, it goes bad in a few weeks. I've been told that this is due to a high content of Lipase in it, but I really know nothing about it.  The scalding has worked though.  I actually scalded some before we left for our Christmas trip across the country, and I forgot to freeze it.  It sat in the refrigerator for a week and a half.  And when we returned, it was fine.

When it goes bad it has a terrible aftertaste, like eating soap. 

With every new topic and scene in the Modern Marvels episode, I gained a greater appreciation for the cows. I stayed up way too late watching this.

So I just wanted to say: Bovine ladies, I salute you. 

Comments

[Eva]

They do like getting milked--otherwise they get engorged! I used to do a lot of goat and cow milking. I guess it was early training for EPing.

Very educational!

[Aurelia]

Everytime I've ever been compared to a cow, I tend to resent it, but this was actually pretty cool.

So my question is, do moms of twins or triplets make more than two pounds? I know they make more. I wonder?

[maggie]

Fascinating, especially to correlate the fluid ounces to pounds...two pounds of milk sounds like so much!