Milking It

How much milk does it take to make a pound of cheese?
To make one pound of cheese, it takes about five pounds of sheep’s milk, seven pounds of goat milk or 10 pounds of cow’s milk.

A gallon of cow’s milk weighs about 8.6 pounds so a little more than a gallon to make a pound of cheese.
Sheep’s milk has the highest fat content (which also why people love sheep’s milk cheeses, great texture and mouth feel) . Since milk is made from the fatty curds, sheep’s milk has more fat and thus fatty curds per gallon so it takes less milk to make a pound of cheese –

Which is good as Sheep give much less milk per day than cows.

Output of milk per day per animal
Cow: 6.5 Gallons (a gallon is 144 ounces)
Goat 2-3 Gallons
Sheep 3-4 Quarts

According to The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board it takes 21.2 gallons of milk to make a pound of butter.

Homogenized Milk
Ever see milk labeled cream top? Or have seen milk in bottles that have a cap of cream? Strauss Family Farms Milk sells unhomogenized cow’s milk. When milk is mechanically homogenized the fat particles are split apart and integrated in the milk so they won’t separate. It keeps the cream in cow’s milk from separating out. The milk of both sheep and goats is naturally homogenized. The fat particles in these animals’ milk are smaller and mix with the liquid so they are emulsified. This is why often people can drink goat’s milk rather than cow milk, it is easier to digest.

Whale Milk!
If you want to bulk up you can always drink some whale’s milk. Whale’s have 40-65% milk fat compared to 4-6% in cow milk. They say it comes out like soft butter and can make into ice cream just by slowly cooling it and whipping it.
I used to use this information as a joke, but there are people milking whales.
Check it out here: http://www.labspaces.net/96706/Milking_whales_on_a_commercial_scale__not_impossible_