Sitting with mouths open and tongues stuck out, more than 150 children waited to see how to milk a cow.

Instead of hooking the cow up to a machine, Amanda Griffith, mobile dairy classroom instructor for Southwest Dairy Farmers, angled the milk from the udder into the crowd.

“Didn’t you say you were thirsty?” Griffith said.

As the children laughed, Griffith continued to explain the process of milking and pasteurization.

Griffith and her cow, Coco, visited the Selma-Dallas County Library to educate children about milking cows and the benefits of drinking milk.

Milk provides human bodies with vitamin D, calcium, potassium, protein and vitamin A.

After the program, Andranigue Walker and other children walked up to touch the cow’s stomach.

“It didn’t feel like a regular stomach,” Andranigue said. “It’s hard.”

She had expected it to be as soft as her stomach.

Kabrjanna Powell found all the information interesting.

“I learned that a cow has four teats that are used for milking, that a cow will bite you if you aren’t gentle, a cow is fully grown after 10 months [of pregnancy] and a cow has four stomachs,” Kabrjanna said.

Coco, a 7-year-old Jersey cow from a farm in Montevallo, weighs 800 pounds and produces 55 pounds of milk each day, which is more than 6 gallons.

Griffith visits locations in Alabama and Florida. Mobile classroom presentations are provided free of cost by the Southwest Dairy Farmers.