Freshly secreted goat's milk contains a number of viable metabolic pathways including those for the synthesis of triglycerides and phospholipids. Toward understanding this matter, amounts of the fundamentally important energy substrate, adenosine triphosphate, in goat's milk were evaluated. Milk left in the goat udder overnight had less adenosine triphosphate (12.4 muM) than fresh secreted milk (37.6 muM). In similar experiments the skim milk derived from whole accumulating in the udder overnight was lower in adenosine triphosphate (14.2 muM) than skim milk from freshly secreted milk (26.0 muM). To determine changes in quantities of adenosine triphosphate after milking, milks were divided into two parts, one containing only milk and the other milk plus 2,4-dinitrophenol and sodium arsenate, inhibitors of oxidative and substrate level phosphorylation. Adenosine triphosphate in milk decreased during 4-h in vitro incubations, and the rate of decline was markedly greater in the presence of the inhibitors. Thus, freshly secreted goat's milk contains significant amounts of adenosine triphosphate, and more can be synthesized therein after removal from the udder. In limited samples human and bovine milks contained much lower concentrations of the compound than those in goat's milk.