English

Verb

milking

1. present participle of milk

Milking is the act of removing milk from the mammary glands of an animal, typically cows (cattle) and goats. A rarely used term for the milking of cows is vaccimulgence, derived from the Latin words vacca ("cow") and emulgere ("to milk out"). Milking is also used to describe the removal of venom from spiders and snakes, for the production of antivenom.

Cows can be milked by hand or by machine.

Hand milking is performed by massaging and pulling down on the teats of the cow's udder, squirting the milk into a bucket.

A milking machine is designed to extract milk using a vacuum. The teat cups of the machine are attached to the cow's teats, then the cups alternate between vacuum and normal air pressure to extract the milk without damaging the teats of the cow. Often this is done coercively.

See also

• Automatic milking

Source

• MilkAcademy (for more applicable information about milking equipments and dairy farming)

aspiration, bleeding, bloodletting, broaching, cupping, drafting, drainage, draining, drawing, emptying, phlebotomy, pipetting, pumping, siphoning, sucking, suction, tapping, venesection