COWS IN A CITY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17918, 24 October 1932, Page 11

COWS IN A CITY

NEVER SEE THE FIELDS hsu ■ Ur! ,-tj •£ i. -- HIGH-GRADE MILK ./ :tj «3t t. S: ; 11 LIVERPOOL, Sept. 7. Liverpool lias, confined within its boundaries, more than 3560 dairy cows housed in 276'Cowsheds or shippons, and so carts the distinction of having a greater population of dairy cows than any other city in the United Kingdom or America. T|io shippons are hidden in the alleys and byways of the densely-popu-lated districts,,-More than 75 per cent, of - these 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 10 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 baekyard beasts. GRASS FROM THE PARKS The .writer toured the streets witlnn a mile of the town hall to-day 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 Shod 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 sterilising of bottles and cans. In the sluppons the cows enjoy some of the most modern \ entilation and watering systems More than ,S per cent, of the city cowkeepers arc producing milk which is claimed to be infinitely better than the Grade A standard. The medical officer of health foi 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 favorable impression.