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For over thousands of years, humans have been using their hands to make products. But with the onset of the industrial revolution, some 150 years ago, machines took over. Today machine-based modes of production have become the norm. This is true even for the process of milking a cow.
Cows used to be (and sometimes still are) milked by hand. Picture this: A bucket is placed under the cow's udder, and its teats are pulled and squeezed to extract the milk (read about how to milk a cow by hand). Milking a cow two times a day by hand takes about two hours on average. A single cow can provide approximately 10 gallons (38 liters) of milk.
Today, milking by hand would not be efficient enough to supply milk to all the people who want their daily dairy products. In order to keep up with demand, the dairy industry nowadays uses automated milking equipment. Large dairy farms use milking machines, which consist of:
- four teat cups (rigid shells with soft rubber liner)
- a claw (connects teat cups with tubes)
- a long milk tube
- a long pulsator tube
- a pulsator
Continuous vacuum helps keep the machine attached to the cow's udder and massages milk from the teat by creating a pressure difference. Four streams of milk from the teat cups are usually combined in the claw and sent on through a hose to the milk line or collection bucket. The milk is then sent either by hand or by an automatic pump to a central storage vat or bulk tank. There it passes through a heat exchanger that cools down the milk. Milking each cow mechanically only takes about five to ten minutes!
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