“Why do cows have milk?”

“How do they make chocolate milk?”

“When was she born?”

“Do we get to pet the cow?”

Robberson Community School kindergartners and first-graders had many questions about Snickers, a cow standing right outside their school’s entrance in a mobile dairy classroom. Suzie Reece, a mobile dairy educator from Southwest Dairy Farmers, had brought the cow to help educate students about where milk comes from.

“How many of you have had milk today?,” she asked to begin her presentation. “You need to have three servings of milk a day. Hold up three fingers for me! You need three servings of milk a day to grow muscles and be healthy.”

Reece and Snickers, a four-year-old Jersey dairy cow, visited four different SPS sites this week: Bright Stars Early Childhood Center, Westport Elementary, Robberson Community School and Springfield Option Site.

The entire school got to observe Snickers at Robberson, but every mobile dairy classroom lesson features a live demonstration of how cows are milked, as well as why they produce milk. Plus, Reece introduced two vocabulary words: pasteurized and homogenized.

“Now, I told you at the beginning, how many servings of milk do you need a day?,” Reece asked three classes of learners.

Students raised three fingers high, and Snickers agreed with a "moo."