Dairy cows need to be milked at least once a day to stay comfortable, healthy, and to keep producing milk. Most dairy farms milk cows twice a day to manage milk volume and ensure cow welfare.

Dairy cows have been selectively bred over hundreds of years to produce high volumes of milk: enough to feed their calves, with plenty of extra milk for people to drink or turn into other dairy products. Because dairy cows make a lot of milk, if they aren’t milked their udders will become full and uncomfortable. To ensure cows continue to produce milk after calving, they need to be milked each day.

The volume of milk an individual cow produces depends upon various factors, such as their diet, breed, genetics, age, and stage of lactation.

The most common practice is for a dairy farm to milk their cows at least twice a day. However, some farms with a high producing herd may milk some or all of their cows three times a day, while other farms only milk once daily.

References

 www.dairy.edu.au/information/australian-dairy-cows