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The
following oral histories were gathered by Nancy Weir
McCowan for her "Brown's Corners"
paper.
Dairy Cattle
As Told to Nancy Weir McCowan
I
don't really remember much about living at the Brown's Corners farm at Finch and
Markham Road. We left there when I was 3. But here are some stories,
mostly from my siblings, all older than me. My own notations are in (brackets).
Jack
Weir:
Dad
sold milk from the Brown's Corners farm and it went to
the Farmers Dairy. It was trucked
there by Harvey Dix or his son. The
Dix family lived a short distance north of Kingston Road on the west side of
Markham Road (#48). They trucked
milk to several dairies. (Different
coloured tags were put onto the milk cans to tell the driver which cans of milk
went to which dairy.)
Ab
Third also hauled milk and he took ours after Mr. Dix stopped hauling.
The Thirds, who were farmers as well, owned a truck and one use for it
was hauling milk for the local farmers. The
Thirds lived three farms west of Brown's Corners near
P. S. S. #2 School. One day
Ab gave me a ride in his truck. He
often gave me a ride to school. I
was about ten years old. We drove to
the top of the hill on Finch near the
Rouge
River
and stopped at Tyrrell's to pick up milk.
This family milked about fifty head of cattle (an extraordinary number at
that time) and shipped from twelve to eighteen cans of milk a day.
In the winter the cans were loaded on a stoneboat and drawn by a team of
horses to the road. While I was
waiting for the milk to be loaded I was chewing on a plug of strong licorice -
not the mild kind we see today. Now
and then I would lean out the window and spit in the snow, making a pattern.
The Tyrrells had a hired man who the kids called the "Old
Dutchman". He looked at me and
exclaimed 'Look at Ver. He chew
Tabac!'
Harold
Lawrie (married Peggy Weir):
My mother, Gertrude Kirk, was a milkmaid before she was
married. She helped do the chores
for various farmers and often did the milking.
At one place, she was readying the milk cans for pickup.
The farmer came along and found a can that was not full.
He said to her 'Put some water in'.
She obliged by adding a little and then he ordered 'Put some more
water in!' This was a practice known as 'Watering the Milk'.
It was very much frowned upon by the Dairies but it was often done.
Some tests were done at the Dairy and sometimes the guilty farmer was
caught and punished, possibly with a fine, or refusal to take his milk.
(Managing Editor's Note: Until comparatively recently, or at least
during all the centuries of mixed farming, the pasture land for cattle was
typically the poorest cleared part of the farm. The best of the arable land
was for growing crops, either for human consumption or cattle feed. Crop
rotation every four or five years was good for the soil and for yields.)
Neil
Weir:
Yes,
we shipped milk. Nowadays when I
look back on it I really think that the Brown's Corners farm was not as good as
the one at Malvern because it was too low, the south end of it in particular.
There were the ten acres down by the railroad that I called the Swamp --
that was the pasture field, and a lot of time there
would not be much on it. We had to
take the cattle south down Markham road a half a mile and put them into that
field for the day. Then they were brought
home for milking and put into the barnyard for the night.
There was no way they could give much milk after a day in that pasture.
Nowadays the dairy people would not even consider the techniques used
then. You have to feed much better
to get a lot of milk. The cattle
were not as good, I suppose, but then they did not get a chance on pasture like
that. In the winter Dad fed the cows
very well in the barn (grain, hay and especially silage) but in the summer,
no." (Dad did not own
Registered cattle as long as I was around the farm.
He bought good 'grade' animals, mostly
Holstein
s.)
Jack
Weir:
There
was a field of alfalfa behind the house. For
cattle this was their favourite pasture. However,
farmers had to be very careful with their herd so that the cows did not eat too
much of it at one time. Alfalfa was
a good milk-producing feed but it could be deadly.
Too much of it in a cow's stomach would cause gas by fermentation, and
this gas would bloat the animal, often causing death.
Usually
the alfalfa field was well-fenced with a locked gate, and when Dad wanted the
cows to have some alfalfa, they would be turned in for a short time - perhaps up
to an hour. Then they would be taken
from the field before ingesting too much.
One
day, when Scarborough Fair was on in
Agincourt
, the whole family was away for a longer time than usual.
When we arrived home we were stunned to see that the cows had broken into
the field of alfalfa and no one knew how long they had been in there enjoying
their meal. By this time, many of
them were lying on the ground, bloated and near death, due to damage to vital
organs.
Besides
making a quick call to the veterinarian, it was vital to open a passage to the
cow's stomach, and let the poison gas out as quickly as possible.
Most farmers kept a tool called a TROCAR.
(Dictionary
- Fr. Trois three plus
carre (side) - a
surgical instrument for drawing fluid from a closed body cavity, consisting of
a small tube which is pressed through the wound made by a stylet projecting
from its end, the stylet then being withdrawn through the tube).
On
every cow there are two humps near the rear end (the hip bones).
To find the proper place to insert the trocar, put the little finger on
top of the left hump and, spreading the fingers out, bring the hand around to
the front of the two humps where there is an indentation.
The Trocar is rammed into this spot.
The spike or "stylet" is then pulled out, leaving the hollow
tube in the open wound so that the gas can escape.
That
particular day Dad lost about eight of his cows even after using the Trocar.
The damage was already too much for the cows to survive.
(
This kind of tragedy was a common occurrence on farms.
It could happen to any kind of animal, not just cattle
(horses and sheep, etc.)
In the past, this type of thing had even made the local news:)
Mr. Joseph Ramsay, who has gained more than a local reputation as
an expert veterinary surgeon, performed a very delicate operation recently
on a cow belonging to Mr. Robt. Ormerod of Brown's Corners.
The animal had bloated and would soon have died.
Mr. Ramsay made an incision, liberating the gas and removing some of
the contents of the stomach, with the result that the animal is all right
again.
Nancy Weir
McCowan:
Besides,
alfalfa, another crop which could be dangerous at times was sweet-clover.
Certain breeds of cattle such as the Ayrshire, had to be de-horned,
usually when they were fully grown but still young, so that they could not
injure the other cattle. Sweet
clover is a feed which thins the blood. It
was important that when the farmer intended to de-horn his animals, that he not
feed them sweet clover before the operation, or else there was the danger that
the animal would bleed to death. The
de-horning operation was done with special, large-sized shears.
One
summer we visited some former Kingston Road neighbours who now live in
Nova Scotia
. During the course of the
conversation, Bob McClung told Bill that he remembers helping to de-horn
one of the McCowan animals, and it, unfortunately, bled to death.
Of course, in those days, every herd of cattle needed the services of a bull in
order to keep the milk flowing. At
the special time in her "cycle" the cow would be "mated"
with the bull, producing a calf in nine months.
Before calving, the cow went through about a six-week "dry"
period, and upon birthing the milk would begin to flow again.
At a dairy farm, the calf would usually be taken away from the mother as
soon as possible, and her milk would, instead of going to the calf, be sent to
the dairy. The calf itself would be
fed milk from a pail as long as it needed milk and then weaned onto chop
(ground-up grain). Meanwhile the cow
would be "bred" again and the cycle would start over.
Dairy farmers always hoped that a new calf would be a female so that she
could be kept in the herd for milking. Bull
calves were almost always sent away to market for meat.
Occasionally, if the farmer needed a new bull and the new calf looked
like a good one, he would keep the bull calf for breeding purposes.
Back
in those days farmers did not know much about "genetics" and really
could only go by the looks and important physical characteristics of the
animal. As a judge of animals, our
father was probably one of the best of the local farmers as the following
excerpt from a newspaper clipping attests.
EAST
YORK
FARMERS' and WOMEN'S INSTITUTES
Hold Summer Meetings
Young
Men's Stock Judging Competition
The annual gathering of the Agincourt branch of the Farmers and Women's
Institutes held in that village last Thursday has probably never been excelled
in attendance and interest, each of the sessions being remarkably representative
of the best in agriculture and domestic science to be found in
York
County
. A feature of the farmers' big
meeting held in Heather Hall and immediately adjoining, was the stock judging
under the personal supervision of C. F. Bailey, assistant deputy minister of
agriculture, and W. J. Bell, live stock specialist, together with J. C. Steckley,
county representative. (the Agricultural Rep.)
Stock judging is a comparatively new feature of the Farmers' Institute meetings,
and great interest centred in the awards subsequently given to the young men
entered in the competitive tests as to the outstanding features in dairy and
beef cattle. The deputy minister, at
the close, expressed surprise and gratification at the expert knowledge shown.
The awards were as follows: Dairy
cattle 1. J. M. Weir,
Malvern. 2.
A. E. Kennedy,
Agincourt
; 3. H. B. Elliott,
Agincourt
. In the judging in the best points
in beef cattle, A. E. Kennedy won the first award, J. M. Weir, second,
and Fred C. Yeomans, third. Each of
the young men were given a cash award, but Mr. Weir, scoring the highest
number of points in all, was awarded the handsome cup donated by Mrs. Joseph
Kilgour of Sunnybrook Farm. Mrs.
Kilgour was present during the afternoon at the ladies' meeting and herself
presented the coveted trophy to Mr. Weir.
Date - June 15, 1915
Nancy Weir McCowan:
As
a rule, cows are quite docile animals and rather
dull-witted. Ordinarily, you can
walk among a herd of cows and they will ignore you unless you try to come
between a cow and her calf. Then the
mother can be a bit 'fractious' and will try to protect her own.
When milking cows, which I never had to do, one had to be watchful
because there were always one or two which were 'kickers' or which liked to lean
against the person doing the milking.
A bull, however, is another matter. Up
until they are about a year-and-a-half to two years old they are somewhat
dependable but when they are mature animals, watch out!
Soon after they are born the farmer would insert a "ring"
through the bull's nose (the boney part between the nostrils).
A wooden staff could be then attached to the ring and the animal could be
led in comparative safety. One day,
Uncle Torrance Weir led his bull from his farm at Neilson Road and Sheppard
Avenue all the way to the Agincourt Fairgrounds to show him at the Fair.
Of course, there was very little traffic then but it was a long way to
take a bull by yourself.
Blake
Weir:
One
day the hired man, Jack Johnson, was drawing out manure - the hard way - forking
it on the wagon and then forking it off.
Dad had gone out to the chicken house to get a rooster.
He was going to kill it and then Mother was going to cook it for supper.
He was walking across the barnyard and the bull was outside.
Suddenly Jack Johnson yelled, 'Look out Jim!'
Dad turned around and here was the bull bearing down on him. He
had the rooster under his arm with his fingers laced through the bird's feet and
he threw the rooster at the bull's face. The
bull stopped. Jack had a fork in his
hands and there was another fork there and they put the bull in the barn.
The next day he went to Market. (Blake
doesn't say what happened to the rooster but I imagine that he made it to the
supper table anyway.)
You
couldn't put a full grown bull into a box stall.
We always kept him tied up. The
cows were tied as well. They were
paired off with a wooden post between. A
chain was attached to each side of the post and each cow would be tethered with
a chain around her neck. (More
modern stables to be built later on would have had steel stanchions for the
cattle. Stanchions are metal bars
fastened in an upright position through which the animal's head is inserted.
The bars are held in position by short chains which allow a little
movement, but the bars are too close together to let the animal get free.)
Attached
to each post was a metal water bowl and the cows learned to push down on a bar
in the bowl with her nose to open the valve and water would flow by gravity from
the reservoir into the bowl for her to drink.
Jack
Weir:
If
a farmer did not own a bull, he would have to take his cow to a local farmer who
did have one. The usual charge for
the services of the bull at that time was $1.00.
It was hardly worth having a bull.
Ruth
Weir Pike:
When
I was going to High School at
Agincourt
, the farm just north of the school on Midland Avenue belonged to Bert Kennedy.
The Kennedys had a bull, and we often saw a cow being led up the road.
We all knew where it was going and for what purpose.
We had a French teacher who often talked to us in French.
One day, he looked out the window and without thinking about it he said 'Voila!
Une Vache!'. Everybody
just burst out laughing and he blushed right to the roots of his hair.
The
Scarboro Heights Record V14 #11
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