# Why is milk measured in pounds...



## General Brown (Jan 10, 2008)

instead of quarts or gallons? I think alot of us newbies are confused on this.

Thanks in advance.


----------



## chamoisee (May 15, 2005)

Accuracy.


----------



## copperpennykids (Sep 6, 2004)

Helianthus said:


> Accuracy.



Yes, that. To elaborate, sometimes the milk is foamy and it looks like there is more milk than there really is.... Some people will say their goat gives a gallon a day, when in reality, when you weigh the milk, it is 6.4 lbs. or something which is approx. 3 quarts.

Weight is weight and very accurate. No wishful thinking! LOL


----------



## General Brown (Jan 10, 2008)

So, a gallon of milk weighs about 8 1/2 pounds?


----------



## Blue Oak Ranch (Aug 23, 2005)

It's really hard to add up and total the milk records if they're kept in volumetric measurements - if she gives two quarts, a half cup, and three teaspoons in the morning and one and 3/4 quarts, a quarter cup, and a tablespoon in the evening you have your math cut out for you. 

Even in pounds and ounces, it's more cumbersome than measuring in tenths of pounds as there are 16 ounces to the pound - not base 10 math! Dealing with the milk records of 6-10 goats makes it even more tedious that way. 

For all intents and purposes, 8lbs is a gallon of milk. In reality, it does weigh a little more - not a half-pound more, I think...I can't recall off the top of my head how much, but maybe 8.25 lbs? 

I have a calibrated digital scale that I use for weighing and selling farm produce that is my milk scale. Love it and wouldn't trade it for the dial scale.

Cheers!

Katherine


----------



## Saffy (May 18, 2007)

I thought it had something to do with butterfat content? That a richer creamier milk might not have the same weight as a lesser creamier milk? Like the Nubian goat as to the Saneen goat? Can be wrong though.


----------



## KittenMittens89 (Apr 18, 2008)

I had wondered this myself.


----------



## goatsareus (Jun 23, 2007)

General Brown said:


> instead of quarts or gallons? I think alot of us newbies are confused on this.


because I keep a scale in the milk parlor and weigh each does production before I pour it into the tote pail.


----------



## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

Milk at body temperature (i.e. just milked out) is about 1.02 kg/L...which means it's just about 8.5 lb/gal (in the fridge it's more like 8.7 lb/gal). But this does depend on the butterfat content. I've seen a lot of people just round to 8 lb/gal - i.e. "A pints a pound the whole world round".

I'm trying to convince everyone at the farm to use kilograms and liters (I'm an engineer) but it hasn't caught on yet...


----------



## hoofinitnorth (Oct 18, 2006)

If you look around the stores, just about every food you buy is weighed. Sometimes they have "contents may have settled during shipping" to explain why that box of cereal you just bought is only half full. 

If you weigh it, you can compare apples to apples. For years I have advocated people buying and using animal feed by weight and NOT by volume. Old habits die hard, I guess, but when they figure out that those big bales they have been buying only weigh 35# and last two winter horse feedings but cost $10 vs. the little compressed bales that weigh 65# and last four winter horse feedings and cost $15, they start to do the math...  If you don't weigh, you don't know what you're feeding, you're guessing. Sometimes guessing is "good enough" but it will help you more closely monitor your spending and how that spending is converting to production.

I learned this lesson a LONG time ago when I did my first 4H record book. I figured out what my horses cost to feed each meal, house all month, bed each week, etc. I did it to the penny. My dad wasn't so happy after he saw that break out and realized what he was spending *each day* instead of just griping about the ton of hay he'd purchase now and then. And of course he didn't have any hired hands and we had "rough board" where we did all the work and provided all the feed. Still spendy even back in the 1980s!!


----------



## billooo2 (Nov 23, 2004)

Also, most milk is shipped from dairy farms via tanker trucks. It is much easier to just weigh it.......picture trying to count the gallons coming out of a tanker truck.


----------



## hoofinitnorth (Oct 18, 2006)

And commercial dairy farms are paid per hundred weight.


----------



## LaManchaPaul (May 21, 2008)

my online converter did this:
1 gallon [US, liquid] = 128 ounce [US, liquid]
128 ounce = 8 pound


Sorry MadNess. I'm too old to gram it. My kids do, but it is dizzying to me.

1 pint [US, liquid] = 16 ounce [US, liquid] "a pints a pound the world round" YEP!

It would be interesting to know if ND milk is heavier by volume than say LaMancha or Saanen. A Mason jar quart of milk is a quart. I fill it to the rim.
Paul


----------



## madness (Dec 6, 2006)

The online converters are for water and milk is a bit denser than water. It's still darn close and good enough for most purposes since you really do only record the weight!

I was actually going to take some graduated cylinders out to the farm and a sensitive lab scale to see which of our girls has the densest, meaning the most butterfat, milk. I guess I ought to do that one of these days and report the results to you guys about the EXACT weight to volume of different goats!


----------



## woodsman (Dec 8, 2008)

I switched my digital scale to grams because it had a really weird way of displaying pounds, ounces and fractional ounces. And of course of was no less of a pain to total the dailies with all the pounds ounces and their fractions as it was with quarts, pints, cups and ounces. Who'd have thought that milking goats will turn me metric, at least when it comes to food.


----------

