ELECTRIC DAIRY COLD STORAGE 



By W. T. ACKEEMAN 



No figures are available as to the tons of ice annually harvested 

 and placed in storage by New England dairymen during the winter to 

 furnish refrigeration for the preservation of dairy products, such as 

 milk and cream, through the warm summer months. The sight of 

 men and teams engaged in these operations on rivers and ponds has 

 led many to consider the farmer fortunate in obtaining ice so easily 

 and cheaply at a slack period of the year. 



Indeed, many farmers, by reason of labor and other particularly good 

 local conditions, Mill for some time, no doubt, be in a position to 

 obtain better general results, overlooking the superior qualities of me- 

 chanical refrigeration, by using ice. 



The chief value of electric refrigeration, however, is in its elimin- 

 ation of the ice problem during the spring, summer and fall months, 

 when the ice must be dug almost daily out of the icehouse, cleaned down, 

 carried or drawn to the ice boxes or cooling rooms and loaded on the 

 bunkers. Many dairy farms use three or four hundred pounds every 

 other day, and the task requires considerable valuable time in the rush 

 season. 



In order to obtain information on the cost of electric dairy cold 

 storage, studies were made on three of the farms in the series of ex- 

 periments in rural electrification conducted by this Station in cooper- 

 ation with the State and National Committees on the Relation of Elec- 

 tricity to Agriculture. 



The experimental work herein reported is concerned with the storage 

 of milk and cream in bottles on these three retail dairy farms. The fact 

 that a considerable amount of surplus milk was always stored in cans 

 has indicated that the same method is equally practical for bulk milk. 

 Precooling in each case was accomplished by means of cold well or 

 spring water. 



COLD STORAGE ROOMS 



The equipment used on each farm is of the dry room type, as 

 distinguished from the wet tank type, and consists of an insulated 

 room large enough to admit a person, as well as the load of milk 

 and cream, and chilled through the medium of cold dry air. Due to the 

 lack of data on the wet tank type comparative costs of the two methods 

 are not entered into. Since the three rooms varied considerably in 

 their arrangement, a general description of each is given as follows, 

 and detailed figures are shown in Table I. 



Farm No. 2. The cold storage room on this farm is located in an 

 outside corner where barn and shed meet, convenient with respect to 

 loading on the delivery truck as well as fairly near the dairy room 

 where the milk is bottled. It is, however, exposed to the sun for some 

 time during each midday in summer. 



