Dairy Farms

Dairy farms have changed a lot in the last century. For starters, they have grown much larger. In the past, the size of dairy farms was constrained in part by the ability of employees to milk the cows. It took a certain amount of time for a person to milk a cow by hand, and it was only possible to milk a relatively small number of cows per day.

This limited the number of cows a farmer owned and the amount of milk the farmer was able to produce and led to a large number of smaller farming operations. The invention of automatic milking allowed dairy farmers to push past this barrier and maintain and milk a much larger number of cows. 

This increase in the size of dairy farms had manifold effects on dairy as an industry. The entire process of how dairy farms were operated underwent a change with the advances in milking techniques. The history of milking techniques is discussed below.

Hand Milking

Cows were milked by hand until the invention of automatic milking in the latter part of the 19^th century. This limited the number of cows a dairy farmer could realistically own, though several large dairy operations did exist in the United States, which utilized hand milking. Hand milking is used very rarely in modern dairy farming.

Milking Machines

The first milking machines were merely collection tanks that hung under the cow being milked. These tanks allowed cows to move around freely while they were being milked and increased the ease of milking.

Vacuum Bucket

Vacuum buckets were suction milking machines. They were the first automatic milking machines available and though they did increase milk production levels slightly, attaching and detaching the vacuum bucket machines was a labor intensive, time-consuming process.

Milking Pipeline

Milking pipelines reduced the amount of human labor necessary when milking a cow. The pipeline acts as a sort of “milk bucket” running along the ceiling of the barn, to which the automatic milking machine is attached. The milk flows directly from the cow, through the milking machine, to the pipeline, which eliminates the need for a milk-holding container to be located beneath the cow. This makes the automatic milking machine much less heavy, which makes it easier for farmers to milk the cows.

Rotary Parlors

Rotary parlors are moving platforms upon which cows are placed and milked as it rotates. An individual places the automatic milking device on cows as the platform rotates and when a full rotation has occurred, the milking device is removed and the cows exit the moving platform.