The care of fresh cow's milk has been interesting.  I had never thought of
comparing it with the handling of human milk. I am not originally from
Wisconsin but from North Carolina.  But we did milk cows.  My family sold
milk and also provided milk for my grandparents on a regular basis.

The morning milking was put into canning jars for people to pick up during
the day.  In my *earliest* days we did not have an electric refrigerator,
niether did my grandparents. (I am really 105 years old; I have just taken
care of myself. :) Often Granddad picked up his milk at the end of the day
and it had sat out since the morning milking.  There was never a concern
about its integrity.

And, of course, if we wanted to make butter we left the milk at room
temperature for it to get sour and "clabber" (get thick and "gloppy")--a
day or so. Then my mother would pour it into a churn and my brother and I
would take turns churning it into butter and and the leftover
buttermilk.  Drinking that sour buttermilk was perfectly safe.

There is a butter keeper that one can order through some catalogues in
which one puts water into a non-glazed terra cotta outer container, then
the butter is put into an inner piece. The evaporation of the water through
the outer container keeps the butter fresh and cool and spreadable.

I do know that modern dairy processes are much removed from my family's
activities and rules abound.  We did not feed the cows antibiotics
throughout their lives and they grazed on grasses instead of "funny" feed.
So, I suspect that most nursing mothers (if they are not given excessive
antibiotics) feed more naturally and similarly to my family's cows.

This thread is a bit off the topic of human milk storage,isn't it?  But
since the question was asked it has been interesting reading.

Wasn't there something recently on Lactnet about refrigerated human milk's
being less stable than non- refrigerated milk? I'll look in my files to see
if I can find that and read what it really said. I may have it all wrong.

Patricia Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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