Grater Good dairy farm in Norwood Young America shows how they milk their cows

WCCO-AM / 830 WCCO

As part of WCCO's Laura Oakes' "A Closer Look" this month, she talks to a dairy farmer about the process of milking cows - and no, they're not sitting on a bucket doing it by hand anymore.

Transcript

00:00Keeping our cows all healthy and hopefully we don't get any flashing on there.

00:03This system can be linked to Wi-Fi, so we could type in, they all have a number in addition to their names,

00:10so we could type in their names and do that too.

00:13One of the most common questions I get at classes is if we still milk cows by hand.

00:20And so we don't. This is a milking unit that we use.

00:24It's got a vacuum system, but it's not like a vacuum like you vacuum the ground with.

00:28It's a pulsation that you can feel in here if you want to,

00:31but it's like a little inflation that inflates and deflates to gently squeeze milk from a cow's teeth.

00:37That's what we're watching a lot on this graph too.

00:39So when that cow is done giving her milk, it takes usually five to seven minutes.

00:45It automatically, there's a sensor in there that senses how fast it's flowing out.

00:49It automatically turns off that sensor and there's a string and it'll pull this milking unit right back up.

00:56And then we prep the cows ahead of time, we clean up all their teats ahead of time.

01:01And then we put a post-dip, like a sanitizer on there at the end,

01:04just to make sure that we're not letting any bacteria in there either.

01:07So...

01:08So...

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