Before hooking cows up to milking machines, workers wash the cows' udders again. During the milking process, machines pump milk into refrigerated tanks that keep it cool and fresh. Dairy operations have one or more tanks that each hold about 5,000 gallons of milk. Every day or two, a tanker truck takes the milk to a dairy processing plant in Mississippi, Louisiana or Alabama or to a surplus handling facility like the Dairy Farmers of America plant in Franklinton, Louisiana. Grade A milk can not remain on a farm longer than 48 hours.
Most milk is Grade A nowadays.
The dairy industry is one of the most highly regulated in agriculture. The State Department of Health is in turn regulated by the USDA Food and Drug Administration so that standards are the same no matter where the dairy is located. Milk samples are collected from each farm and analyzed to determine milk freshness and purity. A typical Mississippi dairy will milk about 100 to 300 Holstein cows twice a day, seven days a week. It will produce around 5,000-18,000 pounds of milk a day.