Our Visit to a real life DAIRY

My brother in law works at one of the top ranked (as in top 10) dairies in Utah for quality of milk.

I didn’t realize what a big deal this was until I actually visited a dairy and got the 411.

Apparently, there are different grades of milk.  I did not know this.  For example, Grade A milk is sold as drinking milk and used to make ice cream, whereas Grades B, C and D are made into other milk products like cheese and yogurt.  It’s not surprising really, that cottage cheese is made from Grade D milk. I’ll get to that in a minute.

It’s my understanding that the grades of milk are based on a few criteria.  Grade A milk is judged by the quality of cream, bacterial counts (must be low), there can’t be any antibiotics in the milk (no milk from sick cows or ones with mastitis), the milk can’t be cut with water, the milk has to be cooled within a certain time period, and the procedures for collecting and caring for the cows and milk must be sanitary.

Use your imagination for Grade D milk.  Or don’t.  I’ll just tell you a little something:

Cows with mastitis produce curdled milk.  And, cottage cheese is curdled, isn’t it?

In the diary I visited (which only exports Grade A milk) “hospital cows” are milked separately from the healthy cows and the milk from the sick cows never make it to the consumer.  Rather, that milk is fed to the calves.  That is not the case in all dairies.

Are you drawing the same conclusions I have?

411 aside, we had a great time visiting the dairy and the kids particularly enjoyed trying their hand at milking the cows and bottle feeding the younger calves.  Our visit was like a field trip.  One of the good ones.

I’m playing along with Photo Story Friday and Give Me Your Shot.

Tagged as: Cheese, Cottage cheese, Cream, Dairy, Dairy product, Ice cream, Milk, Utah