19O9 MILK COMMISSION. 



37 



CHAPTER III. 



Being a Brief Record of Conditions Found on Dairy Farms, 

 Showing the need for a much Higher Average. 



In visiting the cities and towns in all parts of the Province, your Commission 

 also visited a few of the farms surrounding these cities and towns. In the "pro- 

 duction, care and distribution" of milk, it was recognized that the most import- 

 ant part is the production. While milk may be contaminated in the distribution 

 and through lack of care thereafter, it can never be made pure and wholesome 

 if it is contaminated at the source of supply. The source of supply must be the 

 starting point in any consideration of this great question. Altogether, we visited 

 upwards? of one hundred different dairy farms in all sections of the Province. An 

 effort was made to see all kinds good, bad and indifferent not with the idea of 

 being able to pass mature and final judgment upon the conditions around any one 

 city, but rather to gain an idea as to conditions in general throughout the Pro- 

 vince. 



Dairying, with few exceptions, is carried on as part of mixed farming. Dairy 

 stables therefore are most invariably just part of the general barns. There are 

 probably not more than a dozen and a half exclusively dairy stables utilized solely 

 by cows in the Province. The average barn is the bank barn, which means that 

 the cattle are usually stabled under the same roof as the horses, with the grain 

 stored above both. In some cases the cattle are completely partitioned off from 

 the horses, but often this is not done. The old idea in the building of a bank 

 barn was to secure the maximum of warmth, and in the great majority of cases 

 this has been accomplished at the sacrifice of light and ventilation. In altogether 

 too many instances they are dark and lacking in pure air. In some of the best 

 bank barns the ceilings were found low and the windows very small. 



To these stables the cattle come only for milking in the summer, but in them 

 they live in the winter. Many stables were found to be equipped with stanchions 

 and with troughs or fixed small tanks for water. In a number of cases the water 

 trough was located at the pump or windmill some little distance from the buildings^ 

 but in a few instances the water supply was right in the barnyard and was sur- 

 rounded by foul-smelling, stagnant pools. In the matter of cleanliness, there was 

 the same great diversity of standard. In a few notable instances 1 the manure was 

 taken out of the stable once or twice a day and immediately hauled a hundred feet 

 or so from the barn, but the piles of manure which may be seen close to the average 

 stable door prove that this practice is not as common as could be desired. It was 

 frequently noticed, even in fairly good barns, that the ceilings were decorated with 

 numerous cobwebs, or hay or straw from the barn above. A large number, how- 

 ever, were found to have concrete floors and the use of concrete for this purpose 

 appears to be steadily on the increase. In some cases care had been taken to pre- 

 vent dust by having the stable ceiling of grooved and tongued lumber or rougher 

 material of double thickness with paper between. 



METHODS OF HANDLING MILK. 



In addition to producing, some dairymen adjacent to the' smaller cities' also do 

 their own distribution, and on such farms the equipment is naturally more elabor- 

 ate. A few even are equipped with bottling plants. Where the milk has only 



