Milk
Historically Icelandic sheep were used for milk. There is an 8-week period where Icelandic ewes give milk. After the first two weeks, the lambs were weaned off the mother's milk. Then for the next 6 weeks, the ewes would be milked daily. Most provided about 1 litre (2 imp pt) of milk per day, while good ewes gave 2 litres (4 imp pt) to 3 litres (5 imp pt). The milk was used directly, or made into butter, cheese, an Icelandic soft cheese called skyr, or naturally sweet yogurt. Sheep milk is good for cheese, because it is high in fat and dissolved solids. A high yield of high-quality cheese can therefore be made from small amounts of the milk.
Sheep are not milked in Iceland today, and instead the lamb is allowed to continue suckling.
Read more about this topic: Icelandic Sheep
Famous quotes containing the word milk:
“The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“The surprise of animals... in and out, cats and dogs and a milk goat and chickens and guinea hens, all taken for granted, as if man was intended to live on terms of friendly intercourse with the rest of creation instead of huddling in isolation on the fourteenth floor of an apartment house in a city where animals occurred behind bars in the zoo.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)