A Convenient Milking Stool.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 205, 28 May 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

A Convenient Milking Stool.

Milking stools arc objects of farm use upon which very little thought has been expended in the direction of improvement upon the old, time-honoured, one-legged thing, which has been for so long accepted as all that is necessary in the shape of a milking stool. It is possible The Farmer may be accused offanciful nonsense in describing and lecommending to- dairy keepers the stool here figured. Ko doubt there are some advantages from a sloveoly point of view in the billet of wood with a piece of board nailed on the end of it, which we so often sec doing duty in colonial cowsheds as a milking stool. These stools, as well as empty candle boxes or kerosene tins, can be kicked about the cow>hed or stockyard, to be covered with rilth, and after a short while flung behind the dungheap, without any uncomtortable feeling that something of value has been destroyed. That is the advantage of nob having good serviceable things about a farm, things that you can't have without a feeling that they ought to be taken care of. This feeling is a nuisance to a certain class of people. " Hough and ready "is their motto, they will tell you, which bein^r interpreted means " la/y slovenliness." If a man has taken some trouble to make a thing he naturally is impelled to take caie of it, especially if he finds the atticlc adds very much to his comfort and convenience in doing his work well. And therefore we advise our fellow colonists to have nice comfortable milking stools in their cowsheds. We do not say the one here illustrated is the best that can be devised, by any means. We might f^ay this if we had been the designer of it ourselves, but we are not. However, we are quite sure this stool Mill be found a great improvement upon many of the makeshift stools at present in use throughout New Zealand. We ourselves have milked in our boyhood's day.s .sitting upon all sorts of things— such as a billet of tirewood (not by any means a stable .seat), a kerosene tin (a clattering affair that often frightens a timid young 1 cow), an empty candle box (the best makeshift stool, but painfully liable to sudden collapse), an inverted bucket, and so on, and not infrequently we have sat upon nothing at all but our own proper heels. But we now say that this happy-go-lucky style of things is a great mistake, not only in the matter of milking stools but in many other things about a farm. And therefore we present our readers with this notion of a milking stool published by a shrewd Yankee, and if it provokes any reader of The Farmer to invent a better one we shall be moie than satisfied, especially if he will send a sketch and description of it for publication in these columns. A good stool adds much to the comfort of the milker, ! and le&seos the risk of having milk wasted by the kicking over of the pail, or the insertion of a cow's dirty hoof in it. The manufacture of the stool represented in the cut is thus described : —

The main or lower part is to be ]0 x 10 inches ; on the back end of this is a piece one inch thick, two inches wide and 10 inches long nailed securely to the top side. The seat is 8 x 10 inches, and is nailed upon the raiser, with its front edge projecting, as ehown in the cut, and hollowed oc.t to fit the pail. A bolt four inches long and a quarter of an inch thick, bhould be put down through the centre of the raiser, holding all firmly together. This stool should have three legs, as shown, two under the front part four inches long below the stool, and one under the seat part, six-and-one half inches long. This makes a very strong and comfortable stool, and no one taking the trouble to make one will over areg-ret the time or labour.