Few Pic's of this mornings milking chores

Just a few pic'sin the barn the wic feed cart , and mt old faithful 5640 Ford

Thanks for posting. Man, does that ever bring back some old memories. We sold out the dairy heard in 1963 when my brother joined the Army. That was in Indiana and we had mostly Holsteins.

Thanx for the pix! Nice looking herd you got there!

Don't know a lot about dairying, but the trench/pit silo brings back some memories. Back when I was working for my dad, we did a lot of (local) custom silage cutting; running a silage cutter.........when everything was working right......was one of my favorite jobs on the farm.

My late dad would've enjoyed those pictures. Things changed when the Korean War started my brother joined the Air Force and I was drafted into the Army. My dad had to give up farming. My nephew has the home they bought in the 50's. Hal

Interesting layout, most small dairy barns I recall from my youth in central MN had the cows all tail to tail and maybe four to five feet nose to wall, you forked the sileage or hay to 'em. I like the rough sawn beams. How old is that barn, and what breed are the cows?

90 percent of the small family dairys are gone up there, they have gone to beef. Lots of the 80-200 acre family farmland is leased to bigger operators, the barns seem to cave in in a few short years once the cows are gone and no maintanence is done on the barn.

Great, back in the early 40's we had a Jersy herd, milked about 60 head, couldnt sell milk for a while, but they bought the cream. what we didnt feed to calves or give away we poured on the field. Dad got his back broken and we lost the dairy, in a way it was a blessing. But sure would have liked to have that land today. Not far from Wickersham WA.

The older half of the barn was a rebuild after a fire in 1938,other half was put up in 2000. I bought this farm in 2004, and re modeled the stable two years ago. The barn ties 62 we have 60 in milk now. The avrage in Ontario is 70 cows. There are three herds ovre 250 with in a fifteen minute drive of me, and still lots of 30 -40 cow herds . When I was a kid there where 25000 dairy farms in Ontario, when I started in 1981 there where 15000, now there is only 4200. Our herd is Jerseys , Not too many Jersey herds around, they make up 5% of the cows in Ontario.The higher the butter fat test your milk has , the more you get paid, our cows currently have a 5,2%bf test.Bruce

Thought I knew every place name in Washington, but Wickersham is a new one. Where is (was) it?

We had 45 cows, from about '50 to '61, about 30 miles south of Olympia, WA. We didn't have tie stalls like the pictures (they're generally only used in cold climates), but a loafing barn with stanchions to feed, and a 4 stall milking parlor with 2 Surge bucket milking machines. Cows standing in the holding pen, run them in 2 at a time for milking. Hang the milkers with surcingles (straps over the back of the cow, with a rod at the bottom to hang the milker on. Dump the milk from the milkers into a strainer, that had a pipe to the bulk tank in the other room.

Fed brewer's malt (from the Olympia brewery) and alfalfa- Alfalfa was $33 a ton including $10 a ton shipping. Irrigated pasture in the summer- sisters and I changed the pipes all summer. When we got to the other side of the pasture, had to carry them all the way across and start over- a pretty big job. Got the bright idea to use the horse- tied 2 on each side of the saddle.

Worked fine until we got into a patch of rocks- the sound echoed up the pipe right into horse's ears, and she spooked- bent up a couple of pipes, and dad was not happy. Remember watching Sputnik go over in '57 in the evening, while we were changing pipes.

I liked growing up on the dairy, but it sure was steady work. . .

I don"t remember ever being able to see Sputnik, but the first communications satellite experiment Echo was clearly visible with the naked eye. I think it was described as being a very large aluminized plastic or rubber balloon that they put into orbit and inflated. The experiment was to see if they could bounce a signal, or maybe light off the surface of the satellite, and receive the signal somewhere else on Earth. As I remember it, the experiment worked and gave the United States something to crow about, having a "first". We watched Echo go overhead all one Summer. It took about 10 minutes to go from horizon to horizon, so it must have been in fairly low orbit.

Sputnik was a small sphere, not much larger than a basketball, with antennas showing. It had electronics that put out a beep radio signal, but really didn"t do much else. But obviously the Russians had succeeded in placing a man-made object in orbit, as the signal went overhead at regular intervals. What really made people upset was that putting Sputnik in orbit showed the world that the Soviets HAD operational rockets that also could have been used as ICBM"s, and our rocket programs were not quite there yet. The space race was on! Both countries put vast amounts of funds into getting and staying ahead. Who won? Maybe the U.S. did, with the moon landings. It sure seems sad to me that our space program is way down, due to lack of funding. I hope that we humans can get along well enough to eventually go to other planets or moons. Unless something is invented to make travel incredibly faster than is possible now, I do not think humans will ever go to other solar systems. They are just too far away.

I remember moving sprinkler pipes...it was a terrible job, either way hot or way cold, and backbreaking work all the time. I also remember how luxurious we thought it was when the guy I worked for finally got a wheel line that moved itself with a gas engine! Still had to hook it up and often straighten out booboos. But it was a whole lot easier than dragging or carrying pipes. Never again. I doubt that I will ever milk a cow again either.

Great looking cows,you should be proud!

I'm not sure I understand your set-up here; do the cows stay in the barn or do you run them in at milking time?

Back when I was doing this, in the late 40s and throughout the 50s, cows came into the barn only at milking time. Then it was just as Mike(WA) described, with the exception that we poured the milk through a strainer directly into a can. The cans were kept in an ice-water cooler (along with a watermelon or two in the summer.)

Must have been the Echo- I remember seeing the sun glint off it, and it seemed large and not real high in the sky.

I changed a LOT of pipes as a kid- worked for the neighbor every summer from '62 to '65- 300 some acres, 9 sets of hand lines. I actually kind of liked it- it was all pasture and hay fields, so I usually did it barefoot, and the wet grass was kind of refreshing on a hot day (but watch out for bees). Had my little transistor radio in my pocket- remember first hearing the Beatles on it.

Guess I was irreplaceable- I went on to bigger and better things after I graduated in '66, and he got wheel lines.

I can see how it would be a real bear in corn, or other row crop- pretty muddy business.

Cows go out in the day time now the weather is nice, But are fed hay/corn silage in the barn before they go out, and again when they come back in.They have a 10 acre field to graze, and free choise dry hay in the rack. There has been no milk in cans here since 1965.The cow stalls all have mattress in them and make the cows quite comfortable while they are in the barn. It is not a rare thing to see 80-90% of the cows laying down and chewing their cuds at one time

Nice herd, neat photos. Your barn reminds me of my two uncles barns. They had Holsteins though.