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I'm a small farmer. We no longer drink the commercially produced cow milk, but have switched to our own raw goat milk.

The METHOD of milking (hand vs. machine) makes no difference to the taste of the milk.

What makes a difference is the animals fodder (food), and how the milk is processed after it is obtained.

I will make one exception to what I just said. Some animals are "hard milkers" with extremely small teats, or extremely small holes for the milk to come out of. They are more likely to bruise, and cause blood in the milk. That could change the flavor. The same goes for people who do not have gentle hands...they can bruise a teat, or udder, on even the easiest to milk animal.

The commercial cows milk you buy in the grocery store is extremely different from what I drink. The holsteins used in commercial dairys are not healthy animals. They have been pushed to the very limit of what they can produce. Their milk is a very neutriant poor, watered down version of what milk should be.

The fats in cows milk are very large. They must actually be forced through a machine to break them down, so humans can digest them, and so they do not sepperate in the container at the grocery store. This process is called "homoginization." The breaking up and distributing of the fats evenly through the milk.

Goat milk is naturally homogonized. The fat cells are very small. It closely mimics human breast milk, and is much healthier for you than cow milk.

Milk must be properly cooled to maintain a good flavor. Otherwise it quickly becomes "off." What the animals eat can also have a very strong effect on the taste of the milk.

Since dairy cows are kept indoors, have have the same foods brought to them (instead of them grazing), and because the dairy cows are all extremely similar genetically, there is very little taste difference in commercial cow milk.

Because I have different breeds of goats, and because they are allowed to graze, we have sometimes have a few suprises in the milk. Fortunatly, baby goats do not seem to notice when their mother has found wild onions to nibble on!

Hand, or machine makes zero difference on the chemistry of the milk.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

I am afraid I will disagree with most of the people who say there is no difference. If you are a strong milker by hand you can create 2 to 3 inches of foam on a bucket of milk. This is because you are trapping air in the milk. This can cause some oxidation to occur that will not occur to the same extent that milking by machine causes. This can cause a slight but almost undetectable difference in the taste of the milk. I don't know if it is better or worse but it is different.

Another difference that is more detectable is the difference in the individual cows milk makeup, butterfat, protein, minerals, etc. With hand milking you can taste the individual cows differences in flavor. with Machine milking the milk from all the cows is blended, and the individuality is lost.

If you ever have the opportunity you can buy all jersey milk and then just straight whole milk and definitely taste the difference.

Nope. It would taste the same..the only difference there would be whether it has been pasteurized, homogenized, etc. If you are drinking it straight from the cow, it will definitely taste different than what you are used to buying from a store. Even whole milk in a store has been watered down a great deal.

Taste varies based on the age of the cow, the animal's health, the cow's general diet, and handling procedures. The reason milk was placed in yellow/off white containers was because the Flourescent lights in the stores can cause it to have an oxidized flavor.

Machine milked or hand milk has no difference in the taste of the milk. On a farm small enough for a cow to be hand milked the milk may have not been pasturized(taken to approximately 140 degrees F for 4 minutes) and the cows are let out of the barn and milk will vary taste with what the cow eats. Stinkweeds come through in milk with a strong taste in farm milk.

Fresh milk whether by hand or by machine will be the same flavor, yet most importantly freshness is maintained by quickly cooling the milk to under 40 degrees temp. Reduced fat milk in the store can still maintain excellent flavor when the processor maintains a higher "solids non fat" level in the milk. Regulations currently specify that all milk must contain 8.25 percent nonfat solids (the proteins, vitamins, calcium and other minerals found in milk). The watered down flavor comes from processors only maintaining the minimum solids.

There are a lot of things that can change the taste of milk. I do not believe that a machine would change the taste.... as long as some one is there to make sure when the milk is gone, the machine is turned off. I have seen the affects of a machine sucking the utter dry and not being turned off.

I believe that different breeds has more affect on taste. That would also include meat.

Males being close down wind, what they eat, another female going into heat.

I am talking more about goats, cows may be the same.

It doesn't matter how the cow was milked. Some breeds of dairy cattle produce higher fat content in their milk, so it tastes creamier.

What really makes milk taste different is when we used to turn the cows out in the pasture in the spring. The flavor was different because of the change in their diet. Also, raw milk (unpasteurized) tastes different than store bought milk.

There are few dairies that actually milk by hand unless you have a very small operation. All milk produced commercially will go through a production process - they'll have to pasteurize, homoginize and remove some fat to make 2% or skim, or even whole milk. If you are milking by hand for your own use, it will taste differntly because it won't go through all of these processes.

The biggest effect on the taste of the milk is the content of the soil that the Cow's graze came from.

If the soil had a bit of calcium in it, then the milk will taste like milk. If it was rich black soil, then it will taste like chocolate milk. If the soil is red (a la Georgia), then it will taste like strawberry milk.

That whole thing about the bunny flavoring the milk is just a fiction, and you should not believe it. Those people are trying to pull your leg.

I guess the other thing that matters is the slope of the hill that the cow grazed on. High slope hills tend to produce cows, and milk, that are lower in fat (due to the higher amount of exercise required to traverse the hill) - smoother hills tend to produce high fat milks.

Also, if you remember your Civil War history, you will recall something about border states. That is where half & half comes from - the cows that graze in border states.

Good Luck!

Chuck

Sure do! Last week bought some chocolate milk and strawberry milk. Sure tasted different to me. Than I added some butter milk to my coffee and nearly passed out. Was in Spain a few years ago and I ordered some Cafe con leche and the waiter added goats milk, Pheew. Sure tasted like chalk to me. Thank I will switch back to beer, less cholesteral