dairying
The development of modern dairying, which began around 1850, has been driven by the growth of urban markets and by scientific, technological, and economic factors: the invention of specialized machines, notably the cream separator (see separator, cream) and mechanized milking machines (and more recently automatic, or robotic, milking machines); research in chemistry, physics, and bacteriology; the discovery of pasteurization; the introduction of the test devised by American agricultural chemist S. M. Babcock for determining the fat content of milk; improved refrigeration and transportation; the discovery of new uses for the byproducts of milk processing; and increased milk productivity resulting from scientific feeding of cattle and the application of advanced biotechnology to breeding. Traditional small-scale dairy farms have increasingly been replaced by larger operations with herds of 1,000 cows or more.
See G. Schmidt and L. D. Van Vleck, Principles of Dairy Science (1988); K. Russell and K. Slater, The Principles of Dairy Farming (11th ed. 1991).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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