My wife, Wendy, is Danish. Her mom often told us about her grandmother who worked as a milkmaid on a dairy in Denmark before milking machines were invented. Evidently her hands would become so hot ...

There are essentially two ways to milk a cow. The first is the age-old practice of milking by hand. The second is by machine with buckets and pipeline milkers. More on this second method in my next ...

There’s a rhythm to milking a cow by hand. Squeeze, pull, squeeze, pull. We had milking machines for our small herd, but Dad liked to milk one or two cows by hand to get the work done sooner. It also ...

Chad Kieffer, a third-generation farmer from Utica, Minnesota, has five milkers for his herd of 350 cows. The milkers are squat, patient, persistent workers. They hum around the mooing cows. They are ...