COWS IN A CITY

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3444, 12 November 1932, Page 8

COWS IN A CITY

NEVER SEE THE FIELDS. HIGH-GRADE MILK. Liverpool has, confined within its boundaries, more than 3560 dairy cows housed in 276 cowsheds or shippons, and so earns the distinction of having a greater population of dairy cows than any other city in the United Kingdom or America. The shippons are hidden in the alleys and byways of the denselypopulated districts. More than 75 per cent, of thse sturdy beasts —and it is strangely true that they are sturdy —never see the fields or the light of day except through skylights and glazed windows. Their average spell of unnatural confinement lasts about ten months but sometimes they live in the shippons for three years and more. Liverpool gets more than one quarter of its milk supply, amounting to 10,600 gallons daily, from the patient backyard beasts. The writer toured the streets within a mile of the town hall and visited a number of the best-known cowkeepers, and had an opportunity of inspecting their stock. Many of them never taste grass again after entering the city, but a number of cowkeepers made a practice of cutting the city parks and golf courses free of charge and taking the produce to their shippons. The writer found a shed containing 30 beasts in a yard behind a tiny dairy shop in a cobbled street with rows of houses on either side. Behind the yard doors were small compact outhouses containing the most up-to-date and spotlessly clean appliances for bottling, bottle washing, refrigeration, and sterlising of bottles and cans. In the shippons the cows enjoy some of the most modern ventilation and watering systems. More than 80 per cent, of the city cowkeepers are producing milk which is claimed to be infinitely better than the grade A standard. The medical officer of health for Liverpool, Dr. W. M. Frazer, reports ~a great improvement in recent years in the clean production of the city milk, and states that tests of the bacterial content leave a very favourable impression.