Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On town milk / by John Chalmers Morton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![evening's milking in the case of distant country farms arrives in London about midnight, ready for the London breakfast tables, and the morning's milking reaches town in time for tea. Nearer London the management is very like that of Clerken- well and Chelsea already described, excepting that to give time for the transmission of the milk everything begins an hour or two earlier. Mr. Collinson Hall, of Navestock, near Brentwood, describes his cow-house management as follows:— We begin milking at 1 o'clock in the morning; each man should have 15 cows. The milk arrives at 5 o'clock in London. The cows are again milked at 10 o'clock, and the milk is in London at 1 o'clock. They are fed as i'ollows :—Each man gives about 4 lbs. of meadow hay to his 15 cows after the midnight milking, and then goes to bed. At 7 o'clock he gives them i bushel of grains mixed with a bushel of sweet chaff, and a handful of salt; the cows are then cleaned and fresh littered; 2 lbs. of hay apiece are given, and at 11 o'clock 1 bushel of mangolds are given ; at 4 o'clock ]).m., 1 bushel of grains and chaff; and at 6 about 2 lbs. or 3 lbs. of hay. The cows are not untied, that they may not mix together, and their water is carried to them. We feed often, and avoid giving large quantities at once. Lime on the floors, gas tar enough to be not offensive, and ten di-ops of arsenicuni (3rd dilution) in the drinking water; great cleanliness, and all the provender good; not putting too many in one shed; good ventilation at the top; no draughts:—These are my precautions. Nearer London still, the management is almost exactly that of the London cowhouses. Mr. Surapton tells me that he feeds his cows at his farm in Hendon parish exactly as he does his cows in Little Warner-street, only beginning an hour earlier, so as to give time to bring the milk in. No attempt is made to cool it for transmission this short journey, but it arrives warm an hour after milking, sometimes however the worse in summer-time for even so short an interval. Mr, Panter who manages Lord Granville's large dairy-farm at Golder's Green, upon the Finchly-road, thus described the manage- ment of his cows, in evidence before the Royal Commissioners on the Cattle Plague :— We give about a bushel and a quarter, or from that to a bushel and half of brewers' grains to each cow, and about 15 lbs. of hay, and about 30 lbs. of mangold wurzel, with 4 lbs. of meal (pea-meal princiiially), in addition to that feed in the winter. In the summer, grass is given instead of hay and mangold wurzel. This mode of feeding, though it damages the constitution of a cow, is adopted in order to force the gre;xtest quantity of milk which the dairyman can get. The gain more than covers all the loss; at least it is supposed to do so. In our suburban district we give them more air, and feed them more on grass in the fields. We do not feed them so heavily upon grains and artificial food as they do in London. We give them much more natural food. Some turn them out from about July to October; and some do not. The^cows always lose condition by being turned out; tliat is invariably ihc case. They](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22298435_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
