Milking, past and present.
If you are like many Canadians, you will, prior to leaving for work in the morning, consume either quickly or more leisurely a bowl of cereal and have added some milk. Although a growing proportion of the population now shuns, for various reasons, the real milk from cows, we traditionally still drink that “white gold,” as my grandfather ennobled it. We know that the Dutch are currently the tallest people in the world and that their stature, average six feet for men, is at least partially due to their copious consumption of milk and milk products, like cheese, yogurt and butter.
My grandfather called cow’s milk “white gold” because milk was his main income. He ran a dairy farm from the early 1900s to 1967. We were fortunate to live the dairy farmer’s life for nine years and learn what that entailed. Mastering the art of milking cows at an early age was part and parcel of living on a dairy farm. In the early '60s without electricity, it meant that we had to acquire the skills and wrist strength involved in the labour-intensive hand milking.
Life, and hand milking, on a dairy farm was demanding. As a 16-year-old, it meant rising at 4.30 a.m. for the morning milking. After completing that task around 6.30, the day proceeded as follows: clean the pails, put the 30-litre milk cans by the road for pick-up, scarf down a breakfast and hustle to school for the 8:15 a.m. bell after a bicycle ride of just over an hour. bell. After finishing school at 2.45 p.m., hustle and reverse that hour plus bike ride to get home by 4, and do a quick change into farm clothes to start the afternoon milking. It should be no surprise to anyone that our beds were very inviting by 9-ish. That farm routine shaped us to be lifelong early risers and lousy late-night party revellers.
In the early '60s the hand-milking process included the following steps: restrain the cow, clean the udder, check and test each teat for mastitis, and then with a bucket between the knees and sitting on a low stool, manipulate the front teats first and then the back teats for a total of about 10 to 15 minutes, which should have drained the udder. Strong wrists and good hands meant the cow would be happily chewing its cud as it was relieved of the milk, poor technique meant the cow kicking up a storm and potentially making the bucket fly.
It was imperative to deliver clean milk because any contamination of the milk by mastitis or dirt failing from the cow into the milk would result in less income for the farmer. And when it rained, as it often does in the Netherlands, one had to prevent the rainwater washing over the cow from running into the milk.
In the fall when the cows were still grass-fed outside and before they were stabled for the winter, milking was frequently very cold work. To warm the body a bit, we used to sneak some raw, warm milk by squirting it straight from the teat into our mouth. It feels heavenly to have that warm milk glide down into one’s stomach when breakfast is still two hours away.
We were told to stop this ‘stealing’ once the neighbourhood’s herds became infected with brucellosis (which led to the destruction of all the herds to stop the disease). One of the neighbours became sterile due to his consumption of brucellosis-contaminated milk. Hence, we stopped drinking raw milk because none of us wanted that condition.
Fifty years later and the machine-assisted milking we learned in the late '60s, once we had electricity, has progressed beyond recognition and currently the milking has become an intricate dance by robotic milkers. This means a learning process for the cows. The acquisition of the new ways must be supervised by the farmer without the need of many hands. There is a whole new set of skills that dairy farmers will have to master. Recently one of our well-known Bradford dairy farms bought this robotic milking system.
That made me realize how far we have come and how dairy farming has changed.
Robotic milking has gained widespread acceptance, particularly in western Europe, to reduce labour on dairy farms, increase production per cow, and improve the lifestyle of dairy farm families milking 40 to 250 cows. The growth of the robotic milking technology has been rapid. In 2009, the estimated number of robotic dairy farms worldwide was about 8,000. By 2015, this number had more than tripled to 25,000 dairy farms worldwide. The percentage of herds using this system is highest in the Scandinavian countries and Netherlands. Widespread adoption, including in Bradford, suggests dairy farmers benefit by greater labour efficiency and having a better lifestyle and field experience. There are teething problems for any farmer implementing this system as well as for cows that must learn the new ways. Just like farmers, and all of us, not all cows are born equal.
Like many things during our life, progress marches on and milking is certainly quite different from what we were used to before machines took over.
Nonetheless, may milk continue to help you grow.
Albert Wierenga is a regular contributor to BradfordToday.
