<<What an interesting slant your post brings! Can any other dairy-savvy
Lactnuts add anything? I would imagine that each dairy goat is much more
like every other dairy goat, each dairy cow much more like every other
dairy cow, than human mothers are to each other, but I could be very wrong.

I am remembering diagrams I have seen of dairy animal's udder and teats.
There is actually a single cistern inside each teat, so of course that
differs from the the human nipple, which does not actually have a cavity
filled with milk. But peristaltic action on the milk sinuses? Now THERE'S a
pregnant idea!>>

I can't answer for dairy goats, but there's a pretty good range of udder
and teat shapes and sizes in dairy cattle. It's more convenient to the
farmer to have teats (or maybe I should say to have cows with teats) that
aren't too short, too long or to large as these can cause problems with the
milking attachments slipping and causing some damage. It's also not good to
have an udder that hangs too low, as these may get dirty easier (increasing
risk of mastitis) or get stepped on when the cow is lying down as then they
are a lot further out from the body. When cows are judged there is a
certain amount of marks alloted for udder and teat appearance and
placement.

I seem to recall that the teat cistern  or teat canal did not have milk in
it until the milking occured. The milk is extracted by taking advantage of
the cow's letdown and the vaccuum pressure of the milking machine. There
was a new design in the liner (the part around the teat) of the milking
machine when I was working with cows in that it compressed the teat in a
triangular fashion as opposed to just compressing straight across the teat.

If you want ot check out milking equipment, the places to look are your
local dairy farms, the yellow pages under milking equipment, or university
research farms or animal science or food science departments.

Here are a few dairy cow websites that may be interesting. There's a huge
amount of research in the dairy industry on milking equipment and vacuum
levels and milking speeds, etc.

http://www.dasc.vt.edu/dasc4374/chap12.htm
http://www.uark.edu/depts/anscposc/Notes/LactationNew.html
http://classes.aces.uiuc.edu/AnSci308/topicareas.html

Donna Hansen
Burnaby, British Columbia
Canada
mailto:[log in to unmask]

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