Is it the same? Howling Cow ice cream now in Harris Teeter

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- In a field off Lake Wheeler in Raleigh lay the "utter"ly delicious beginnings of NC State's Famous Howling Cow Ice Cream.

Cows--160 of them--will be milked two times per day on the NC State-owned property, with each milking yielding around 700 gallons of milk.

That milk is then loaded up and brought to the campus of State, where a two day ice cream making process begins. Around 10,000 gallons of milk are processed per week.

"That's pasteurizing milk and making ice cream," says Carl Hollifield of the NC State Dairy Enterprise System.

How it's made: NC State's Howling Cow from start to finish

There's very little waste in this facility when it comes to ice cream. The separation process creates thousands of gallons of milk, some of which goes to state facilities, like prisons. The rest is used on campus for students.

The plant pumps out around 1,000 gallons of ice cream per week, selling 16 different flavors on campus at any given time. Howling Cow has more than 20 rotating flavors.

The Famous Howling Cow Ice Cream, which before was exclusive to campus, can now be found on the shelves of 16 Harris Teeter's in North Carolina.

The agreement between the university and the grocery store chain, which was announced earlier this month, took nearly a year and a half to complete.

The school had to get an exemption from the Umstead Act, which states that a state agency can not be in direct competition with a private industry. The exemption came with the support of the Dairy industry.

The creation of the partnership has created new jobs and easier access to Howling Cow. There is a difference between what you can purchase at State versus what you get at Harris Teeter.

"Its our formula, our recopies, our flavorings," says Gary Cartwright with NC State Dairy Enterprise System.

The Howling Cow you can buy at Harris Teeter does not use State's cows; it's not even made on NC State's campus. Harris Teeter's Howling Cow is made in High Point, North Carolina.

However, the royalties from the ice cream sold in stores does come back to NC State. It is split on campus between scholarships and dairy and agricultural initiatives on campus.

Six different flavors are currently circulating through Harris Teeter.