The Cream of the Crop: MTSU’s Dairy Creamery that’s serving up skills and smiles

Middle Tennessee State University offers a unique experience for agriculture students. The MTSU farm laboratories provide students a “hands on” learning experience with the goal of turning students into workforce and career-ready graduates.

Students farm 750 acres, including a state-of-the-art dairy and milk processing plant, two beef herds, and a farrow-to-finish swine operation. The farm raises several crops including corn, soybeans and hemp, plus a student garden, green houses, and a student farmer’s market. Agriculture students that work on the farm get an additional education to go along with the classroom experience.

But what most students and local residents of Murfreesboro know the farm for is one of MTSU’s best kept secrets—the dairy creamery. Agriculture students are involved in milking dairy cows, processing milk, and packaging it to be sold.

MTSU is the only university in the state of Tennessee with a full-scale processing plant. This allows a “grass to glass” or “farm to bottle” operation, where they foresee everything from feeding cows to delivering the milk to consumers. The unit produces 11,000-12,000 gallons of milk each year.

You can rest assured that MTSU’s milk is the best quality available—the milk industry is one of the most highly regulated divisions in the food industry. At MTSU’s Milk Processing Unit, not only are students exposed to all critical aspects of the industry, but other groups from federal, state and commercial organizations utilize the processing lab to train their own regulatory officials and personnel.

The delicious bottled milk is available on campus at several locations, and you can find it for sale off campus at local businesses for about two dollars. In addition, the milk is used to make ice cream at Hattie Jane's Creamery on the Historic Murfreesboro Square.

The next time you drink a glass of milk from MTSU, consider the students who planted and harvested the grain to feed the cattle, cared for and fed the cattle, assisted in milking the cows, tested, pasteurized and homogenized the milk, finished the product and delivered the milk to the store. Your two dollars not only quenches your thirst, but provides an education that lasts a lifetime.