Understanding the dairy cows’ adaptability is of interest to secure dairy systems relative to changes of animals’ environment and breeding. Mammary gland is a key component of cows’ adaptability. To characterize its adaptive potential, its functioning was perturbed by carrying out a single milking interval of 24-h (24h- MI). This study aimed to determine: (1) whether cows’ responses to the 24h-MI could be gathered into typical adaptive profiles; and (2) whether those profiles were influenced by traits describing milk yield and composition, mammary distension, milk flow rate, inflammation, and epithelium integrity. The 24h-MI challenges (n=93) were performed on 56 Holstein-Friesian cows. They consisted of 3 successive periods: 1 wk of twice daily milking (TDM) as a control, 1 single 24h-MI and then 13 d of TDM. PCA followed by clustering revealed 3 profiles of mammary adaptability. Cows in cluster 1 lost on average 4.5 and 6.8 kg/d more milk yield than cows in cluster 2 and 3. Cows in cluster 1 were characterized by showing no increase in milk flow rate and by having the lowest increase in udder teats distance between TDM and 24h-MI day. Thus cows in cluster 1 either lost more milk due to a less compliant udder or had a lesser udder distension because of their substantial milk yield reduction. Cows in cluster 3 recovered on average 63.9% of the milk they had lost, whereas cows in cluster 1 recovered almost completely (90.5%) and cows in cluster 2 recovered completely (100.9%). The lesser recovery observed in cluster 3 might be associated with a lower estimated milk yield potential or an initially inflamed udder (as indicated by a higher occurrence of initial milk interleukin-8 (IL-8), a small cytokine playing a key role in mediating inflammation as it triggers neutrophil recruitment) or both. To conclude, profiles of mammary gland adaptability were discriminated on both milk yield loss and recovery responses and were correlated to some new specific traits: udder compliance, initial udder inflammation status and cow milk yield potential.