Milk and Eggs

If your idea of fetching milk and eggs is getting the cartons out of the fridge then you have no idea of the commitment entailed in running a Nineteenth Century Farm. A cow must be milked every 12 hours. Neglect this and she'll go dry or get ill. Cows in the barn in winter must be fed and watered twice a day, first hay, then feed, then water and in season pulped mangles or turnip. Now just in case you've missed the significance of what I've just written think on this; the farmer can never go more than six hours journey away from his farm. A farmer's work place is his home and vacations are just not in the cards. Even if you could find someone to help out a cow must be a willing participant in the milking process so that helper must get to know your cows. Once a year, to freshen a milk cow she is allowed to go dry, introduced to mister bull and allowed to calf. Lest her teat and udder be damaged her calf does not get to suckle. It will be fed her first milk as it is unfit for human consumption and taught soon after to drink out of a pail. Gestation and birthing a calf is actually a rest for the cow from milk production.

Now to those eggs. Those that you get from the store could be incubated for months but nothing will ever happen. Lest your eggs develop unsightly blood spots a rooster is never allowed near even free range chickens these days. Most eggs are produced in a factory-like setting where the hen is presented with food and water automatically, her eggs drop onto a conveyer and her other products are similarly moved away. Her quarters are so cramped she can barely turn around. Nineteenth Century chickens were free to wonder the barnyard by day and spent the night in the chicken coop on a roost. The hen house was provided with nest-like cubicles for the hens to lay their eggs. The farmer's wife collected those eggs daily and selling those produced in excess of family needs provided "egg money", often her sole source of independent income.

A hen that developed maternal instincts and began setting eggs was called clookie and generally confined in a dark space until the feeling passed. In extreme cases she might be placed in a feed bag with her legs tied and hung from the washline. Most hen houses contained one rooster. His presence was required if you actually wanted to hatch new chicks but only one cock of the walk could be tolerated. In any case just as milk cows are bred to produce milk and put no meat on their bodies laying hens similarly do not make good eating hence a rooster's sole purpose was to keep his girls happy and in line. We've all heard of his uses as an alarm clock. Once he got too old he usually lost his head and became a boiling fowl. And yes, they can run around the yard until they've bled themselves dry. At modern incubators egg-producing chicks are sexed upon hatching and the necks of males rung on the spot. As new-born chicks can go 48 hours without eating and have nothing in their systems to produce dirt; most chicks that have to travel any distance are shipped by air.

Keeping a bull on a small farm was an investment in procreation, the animal had no other uses and their aggressive nature held certain liabilities. Most young bulls had rings placed in their noses and they were led by a crooked staff. Either neighbouring cows were brought for "service" or a docile bull might be led to his prospective "bride". Upon successful pregnancy an agreed fee would be paid. All other male calves were neutered by having the nerves and vessels leading to their gonads crimped so that the organs atrophied. They are then termed steers. Ranchers on the prairies surgically remove those organs and hence the term Prairie Oysters. Lacking male hormones steers are much more tractable and their meat far less gamy. Mind you a stubborn steer cannot be made to do anything it doesn't wish to. We had one young steer born outside in summer pasture stand in the barnyard for a week bawling for its mother who was confined to her stanchion in the barn. He stubbornly refused to enter the barn even as snow and rain collected on his back. Today most farmers possess a battery-operated electric prod to deal with such occurrences.

Although some of this may sound inhumane, most farmers cared for their animals and cows on a small farm generally had names. You've heard of pecking order. In a hen house the top hen pecks the top of every other hen's beak. The poor critter at the bottom of the pecking order got pecked by everyone. Even cows know their place and when the cows came home from the pasture to be milked they always walked in the same order and a shoving match ensued if the wrong cow attempted to enter the barn out of turn. Before cows were bred not to have horns such rivalries could result in injury. A beast weighing a third to half a ton demands respect. Farm life creates the irony of creatures that are treated like family; but whose object in life is to put food on the table.