Where Does All the Milk Go?
9th April 2026
In late 2024 I was shopping for milk when I started wondering how many cows — or how many days — it would take to produce my 1.5L bottle. I looked it up and found that the most productive dairy cows can yield fifty litres per day at their peak. Which means my bottle took roughly 43 minutes to produce. 43 minutes!!
My first reaction was that milk must be absurdly overpriced. If one cow can produce fifty litres a day, how is supply ever a problem? But that question quickly got overtaken by a different one. I was standing in the dairy aisle looking at the yoghurt, the cheese, the butter, the cream, the condensed milk, the powder, the ghee.. and it hit me — hold on. This is all from milk? ALL of it? The same white liquid? How?
So I spent a few weekends Googling, and the answer was way more complicated than I expected. This post is me documenting that rabbit hole.