In honor of National Ice Cream Month, we are sharing our family recipe for chocolate ice cream - made with Edgewood Creamery rich, chocolate milk! 

​Enjoy and let us know how your's turn out! 

#edgewoodcreamery #familyrecipe #chocolateicecream#NationalIceCreamMonth #dairy #icecream #UndeniablyDairy#DairyGood #Missouri #PurdyMO #chocolatemilk #HomemadeIcecream

We milk our girls twice a day in our swing-22 New Zealand-style parlor. We have 22 milking units, which swing to each side.

On average a cow takes 4 minutes to milk, (in total about 8 minutes per day). 

Cows enjoy being milked as it relieves the pressure of a full udder. They also get to eat custom-designed feed during milking. Talk about a win, win. 

Here is a brief timeline on a typical day:

4:00 AM– Wash Cycle- This is the process of cleaning all of our milking equipment on the inside. This is done before and after each milking.
4:15 AM– Set up the milk parlor. (Have everything ready for when the cows enter the parlor). One person is doing this job, while the other is bring in the cows. 
4:15 AM– Wake up the girls and bring them into the holding area (where they wait for their turn to be milked).

• Our herd is divided into two groups of milk cows. We milk one group then bring in the second group. This is so that the cows aren't standing in the holding pen for too long of a period.

​4:45 AM– Start milking the cows.
5:30 AM– Time to get the second group of milk cows. Bring them to the holding area. (We switch the fencing around so that the girls are ready to go out on fresh pasture). 

6:00 AM– Start milking second group of cows.
7:00 AM– Finish milking second group of cows.

• Clean milking parlor. Incredibly important to make sure everything is cleaned and ready for the next milking.
• Clean the holding area. The entire holding area is cleaned by flush tanks of recycled water, which flush the manure into our manure holding pit. (We then spread the manure onto our field as fertilizer). 
• Clean all the milking equipment, inside and out. The wash cycle is the process of cleaning our entire milking system on the inside.

7:45 AM– All done! Start this process all over again at 4:00 PM.

We have a milking parlor that holds 44 cows and can milk 22 cows at once. The milking units switch from side to side as each cow finishes milking.

• Twenty-two cows enter the milking parlor on one side.
• Pull the feed pulleys which allow a specifically-designed ration to fill the feed trough. (A balanced diet = healthy, happy cows). 
• All twenty-two cows have their teats sprayed with an iodine solution.
• The iodine solution is used to sanitize each teat and is wiped off with a clean towel.
• Once the teats are cleaned and sanitized, the milking unit is attached to each teat.
• A vacuum pulsates air to have the rubber insert inside of the milking unit gently squeeze the milk out. It’s important to note that inside the stainless steel, it’s rubber.

So that entire process takes about eight minutes. About four minutes of that entire process they are actually attached to the milking unit being milked. 

Our goal is to keep our girls happy and healthy, because happy cows give great milk! 

Do you have any questions about the milking process?