Milking a cow may look easy, but it was anything but for the three fair queen participants and the dairy princess who took part in the Celebrity Milking Contest on Friday afternoon at the Warren County Fair.
Fair Queen Kellie Lindstrom had never milked a cow before. "It was challenging," she said after the three minute event in which she generated half a cup of milk. "I thought it would be easier." She explained that she went with second runner up in the fair queen competition, Michelle Cantrell, and asked some people in the dairy barns to give them a crash course on how to milk.
Lindstrom said that milking a cow "really wasn't" gross, but did say that she wanted to wash her hands as soon as she could.
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Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton
Don’t cry over spilled milk
Dairy Princess Taylor Carlson didn’t and managed to get about a cup and a half of milk, on top of the spill, to win the Celebrity Milking Contest at the Warren County Fair on Friday afternoon.
Cantrell hadn't milked a cow before either. But the on-the-fly training in the hours before the event helped. "We were prepared," she said. "We learned how to squeeze." When asked what the best technique is, a topic that everyone had an opinion on, she explained that you let the udder full with milk and then squeeze. It worked as she procured three-fourths of a cup in three minutes.
Early in the event, Lacey Rowley, first runner up in the fair queen contest, told the crowd "this is harder than it looks, guys." She hadn't ever milked a cow, either. According to the emcee, she finished with about enough milk to add to a cup of coffee. She said that the cow's "udders were small" and that the "cow's tail kept hitting me in the face" but acknowledged that her lack of milk wasn't the fault of the cow.
The last "milker" did know what she was doing: Dairy Princess Taylor Carlson. She finished with one and one-third cups of milk but would have had two cups "if she (the cow, that is) hadn't kicked the can over."
Warren County Commissioner Stephen Vanco offered his insight on the best way to milk a cow. He explained that one needs to place their hand at the base of utter and squeeze down in progression, or pull down on the udder. "It's not high tech," he said.