MOVABLE MECHANICAL MILKMAID

Evening Star, Issue 20052, 18 December 1928, Page 7

MOVABLE MECHANICAL MILKMAID

“Not so many years ago dairy farmers were startled by the innovation of an apparatus by moans of which cows could bo milked, ’’ says a writer in the Birmingham ‘Post.' The milkmaids said the new instrument would not be effective, and they even hinted that the cows might resent, the banishment, of the velvet touch of the milkers. The passing of the years has disproved their forebodings, and now, in many places cows regularly are milked bv machinery. But farmers have not taken kindly to milkingcowa in the new way, because, as they have pointed out, the animals had to bo driven back to the pastures- The machinery was a fixture, and the cows had lie brought to it. Jt the machinery, they argued, could be of ft mobile character then a great deal of tiheir prejudice would bo overcome. That invention is now offered them. “In a held on a farm at._ Upper Bontlev a reporter of the Birmingham ‘'Post' saw a herd of some fifty, cows being milked by means of machinery, and the cows were as calm and quiet amid the throb of the motor, as ever cows were when they wero handled by milkmaids. . _. . The fifty cows had been grazing in a field of many acres wherein there, was ereoted a ringer fence making a com* pound, or a field within the field. Around that compound the cows gathered towards milking time. When had been made ready—and it took but a few minutes to prepare—six cowa were brought to the bail, which is the name given the automatic milker, the apparatus was adjusted, and in a second there was a steady pouring of milk through a tube into a churn. All this was achieved by means of a vacuum pressure of some 121 b to 15lb, the power being supplied by means of a small paraffin engine, which also worked a dynamo for producing electric light—aA adjunct which will bo useful when the mornings aro dark and the sun sets early. The apparatus by which all this was made so simple can 1)0 drawn by a couple of horses (or a tractor) through a gate of ordinary width, and from field to field or place to place at the behest of the farmer. It weighs about 2 tons lOcwt. “A quick milker will take ten to fifteen minutes to milk a cow, where’as this machine will do the work in three to five minutes, allowance being made for a final ‘ stripping ’ by hand. With fifty cows the labour-saving cost is estimated at £4 per week. The man and boy can round up the fifty cows, control the milking, clean up the apparatus, and leave the bail in two and three-quarter hours, which is a great saving of time.”