Dairy Details: 6 Steps Milk Takes to Get from the Farm to Your Table

Whether it’s full fat or low-fat a2 milk, the process of getting milk from the farm to your table is pretty much the same. It starts with cows grazing on a farm and ends as a packaged product in your kitchen, adding flavor and nutrition to your morning meal. To gain a deeper appreciation of this, let’s take a look at the six steps involved. 

1. Grazing

Milk comes from dairy cows who spend most of their lives doing four things: eating, regurgitating what they ate, re-eating what they regurgitated, and sleeping. The luckier cows get space to roam around and eat grass. The unluckier ones spend most of their time in confined spaces with many others, chewing on hay, grain, or silage. 

To increase milk production and decrease the spread of disease, many farms (especially the larger ones) use antibiotics and growth hormones. 

2. Milking

Once a cow’s udder is full, farmers move on to milking. Most farmers choose to milk cows in the morning and afternoon. The process involves squeezing the teat between the thumb and forefinger to guide the milk into a bucket. For smaller farms, this can work well. For larger ones, it’s impractical, so they use machines. 

Many large farms have enough machines to milk over 20 cows at once. The twice-a-day milking takes about five minutes each time. It involves securing a vacuum around the teat to create a pulsation that releases milk from the udder and captures it in a jug. 

3. Storing

Typically, farmers store milk in silos and storage vats at a cool 39 degrees Fahrenheit or less. It’s essential to keep the milk cold enough to ensure the milkfat doesn’t separate. After two days, they generally ship the milk out and thoroughly clean the storage vats. 

4. Shipping

Every day or two, big tankers drive up to the dairy farms. The drivers have the necessary training to judge the quality of the milk before loading up the truck. If it passes their inspection, they pump the milk into the tanker’s stainless steel body, where it’s kept cold during transportation. The destination is a factory filled with refrigerated silos. 

5. Processing

Once at the factory, milk from the tanker is tested to ensure it has the right temperature and antibiotics to enter the processing area. From there, further tests reveal the protein content, milkfat, bacteria count, and other indicators of good milk. If the samples don’t pass inspection, they’re rejected. If they do, they move on to further processing. 

For most milk, this includes pasteurization (heating and cooling milk), homogenization (spreading the far evenly), and separation (separating and remixing cream to reach the right fat content). 

6. Selling

After being tested and processed, the milk is packaged into various sizes ranging from pints to quarts to gallons. This happens by way of pipes that automatically fill the cartons and jugs. All the containers go along an assembly line that stamps them with a use-by date, so consumers know how long the milk is safe to drink. 

From there, the packaged milk is stored in a huge refrigeration unit. Then, trucks stop by to pick up the milk and deliver it to supermarkets and convenience stores across the country. Once purchased, consumers bring the milk home and add it to their coffee or cereal.

Although it might seem magical, the process of getting milk from the farm to your table requires all six of the above steps.