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The Color of Cow's Milk and its Value

Dairy Husbandry Department, Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station, College Park, Maryland

ABSTRACT

Milk is an almost opaque fluid, made up of fat globules in temporary emulsion, colloidal casein and albumin, and various salts, sugar and albumin in solution. It varies in color, due to various reasons, from a yellowish white to nearly white or even to a bluish tinted white.

The observed color is a composite of many contributing factors. The chief of these is the yellow fat globules which are responsible primarily for the yellowish tints. When fat rises as cream most of the yellow color shows above the cream line. The size of these fat globules in the milk influences the composite color as well as does the color of the globules themselves (1), for the surface of small globules is greater in proportion to their size than the surface of the larger ones. Since light is reflected in all directions by these surfaces, milk with smaller fat globules would have a greater reflection and a greater dispersion of reflection, causing a whiter milk, even though the total amount and color of the fat and all other conditions were equal.