Name: Milking a Horse is Harder than You Think
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Anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson attempts to milk a horse, and discovers that the process is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Milking a mother horse, he explains, is all about tricking her. The process begins by having her foal suckle. Then, the foal is taken away and a human rushes in to take its place. But if the mother horse suspects anything is different, things can go awry.

To milk a horse, one must trick a mother horse—and trick her well.

Milking a Horse is Harder than You Think

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Anthropologist and filmmaker Niobe Thompson attempts to milk a horse, and discovers that the process is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Milking a mother horse, he explains, is all about tricking her. The process begins by having her foal suckle. Then, the foal is taken away and a human rushes in to take its place. But if the mother horse suspects anything is different, things can go awry.

To milk a horse, one must trick a mother horse—and trick her well.

Nature

Milking a Horse is Harder than You ThinkPublished: May 15, 2019Niobe Thompson: Milking a horse is all about tricking the horse. So what happens is, someone brings a foal in, the foal sucks the milk from the teats, the milk falls. And then they pull the foal away quickly, and someone rushes in and milks the horse.As soon as the mare knows that it’s not the foal or suspects something—something’s different—the milk dries up. The mare sensed that I didn’t really know what I was doing. As soon as I got a bit of milk out, the teats dried up. They had to bring the foal back in.It’s really hard. It’s just—just a little bit.

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Milking a Horse is Harder than You Think

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Support Provided By

Explore More

First Horse Warriors

Domestic horses have existed for millennia. Modern breeding reduced their genetic diversity in just a few hundred years

Saving the World’s Only True Wild Horses