There is research that has shown that cows need to be milked every 8-12 hours; no sooner than 8 hours from the last milking, but no longer than 12 hours after the previous milking.
Growing up most of the time we milked twice per day, early morning and afternoon. For a little while we milked three times per day. During that time I was in the 8th grade I did the afternoon milking. Once, for a little while, my parents tried milking five times every two days. So on day one, there would be two milkings, and on day two there would be three. That was a scheduling nightmare!
After college, when I worked full time for my parents, I convinced them to try a 10am and 10pm milking schedule. At the time, I was doing both milkings each day with exception to my weekend off. One of my selling points was that Mom and Dad would only have eight milkings per month on this schedule (four milkings for two weekends that I was off). They gave me the go-ahead. For a week. Then they gave me the "stop". Mom said Dad was too tired. Too tired? He wasn't even milking! Turns out, he was in such a habit of getting up very early, that he still did. Then, he stayed up at night in the house until he seen that I had chores done and had gone home. I reminded him that I was an adult now, he didn't have to wait up for me....guess some habits are hard to change!
On our farm, we started with the 10 & 10 schedule. We really liked it. We got more sleep, sleeping from midnight or so until 8am....or later. We weren't milking during the hottest part of the day, the cows are grazing at dawn & dusk, and the hay got done, given that we didn't have to stop in the middle of the afternoon to milk. On Sunday morning we would just start early enough to get to church on time.
It is a bit more difficult to find hired help to milk that schedule, so we eventually went back to a more traditional 5am and 4pm. As our home school evolved, I also needed the morning for school with the kids. After baby #3, we went to a 3:30am and 3:30 pm. This fit the baby's 3 hour feeding schedule at 3am, 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, 9pm, and finally midnight. We had to juggle things around as we didn't have any hired help that year. Or sleep.
No matter how we try to schedule it, there is still only 24 hours in a day. The key is finding the right one for your life right now. Problems do not arise until we become so stuck in our ways that we are not willing to change or try something else. Farmers tend to get stuck in a rut, with the reasoning of "that's the way we've always done it".
Around here, we do our best to schedule the farm around the family. Why? Because that's the way we've always done it.
I'm attempting to include a short video with some clips from the milking parlor. If you think of a great song for this clip, let me know! Summer 2012-
