Dairy farming has been part of agriculture for thousands of years and was usually done on a small scale on mixed farms. Centralized dairy farming developed around villages and cities, where residents were unable to have cows of their own due to a lack of grazing land. Near the town, farmers could make some extra money on the side by having additional animals and selling the milk in town. The dairy farmers would fill barrels with milk in the morning and bring it to market on a wagon.

Before mechanization most cows were milked by hand. The first milking machines were an extension of the traditional milk pail. The early milking device fit on top of a regular milk pail and sat on the floor under the cow. Following each cow being milked, the bucket would be dumped into a holding tank.

The final innovation in automatic milking was the milking parlor, which streamlined the milking process to permit cows to be milked as if on an assembly line, and to reduce physical stresses on the farmer by putting the cows on a platform slightly above the person milking the cows to eliminate having to constantly bend over. Milking parlors allowed a large concentration of technical equipment to gather in one place, which permitted automatic milk take-off devices. Before this, milking was not entirely automatic, and each cow needed to be monitored so that the milker could be removed when the cows were almost done.

Keeping milk cool helps preserve it. When windmills and well pumps were invented, one of its first uses one the farm besides proving water for animals was for cooling milk, to extend the storage life before being transported to the town market. The naturally cold underground water would be continuously pumped into a tub or other containers of milk set in a tub to cool after milking. This method of milk cooling was extremely popular before the arrival of electricity and refrigerators.

Modern dairy farmers use milking machines and sophisticated plumbing systems to harvest and store the milk from the cow, which are usually milked twice or thrice daily. During the warm months cows may be allowed to graze in their pastures, both day and night, and are brought into the barn only to be milked.