Why did people stop milking cows?

Answer 1

Once in the past, there weren't professional/commercial dairies shipping dairy products to grocery stores, so people had to raise their own cows to milk and produce the products for themselves, or they would barter with others who raised the cattle and made the dairy products by trading their produce or other products or services or paying for the dairy products. Eventually, the people raising the cattle began to sell their products in a broader distribution until finally, as today, the dairies became more efficient and able to produce the products cheaper than people could do with their own cattle.

As dairies got larger, they had to find ways to milk enough cows quickly to get the daily supply of raw milk that was in demand. Inventors helped with different mechanized methods, and today that means no one in commercial dairies actually milks a single cow by hand anymore. In some places, the commercial dairies have not taken the function over, so some people in some places still do things the old fashioned way by hand, but that is not common in developed nations. There are also some small farms that produce hand milked products for their own use or for small production to sell to nearby customers.