Methods of and/or apparatus for milking animals

摘要

A claw for connecting teat cups to a milk line of a milking machine has a plurality of individual chambers with a milk inlet leading from a teat cup into each chamber and an outlet leading from each chamber to a common chamber in the milk line, the inlets, outlets and chambers being positioned and shaped to give a swirling or vortex action to fluid in the chambers that the normal direction of flow of fluid from the teat cups to the milk line cannot be easily reversed thus substantially preventing back flow of milk to the teat cups and cross flow of milk between teat cups. A rapid flow of fluid from any of the outlets will tend to induce an increase in flow velocity of air passing from an air inlet to the milk line which in turn will tend to increase a parallel flow outwardly from each of the other outlets.