People
Dairy Work
| Flash Video (Download Flash Player 7) | In the 1930s, the American Dairy Company produced a promotional film that was presented in San José movie theaters. The film shows the cows and workers on the American Dairy Ranch. Even then, the ranch was described as a rural escape from city living. The music was added later. What you see here is a short excerpt highlighting cows grazing on Dairy Hill and going into the milking barn for their afternoon milking. The music was added later. |
Windows Media (Download Player) |
The routine of the dairy ranch revolved around the twice-daily milking schedule. On most dairies, cows were milked around 3:00 a.m. and again at 3:00 p.m. Workers ate breakfast after the morning milking and dinner after the evening milking. Small dairies required the entire family to work—children learned to milk as soon as they were able and often rose before dawn to milk cows before going to school.
Larger dairies required extra hands. In California’s Portuguese dairies, these hands were typically young men just arrived from Portugal. In the 1950s, dairy workers were paid about $200 a month and were furnished with room and board. Hired hands were sometimes given time off on Sundays to attend church, but might have only one full day off each month. Since the cows never took the day off, the hands and the family rarely had time off!
Milkers are by far the most important employees of a dairy and critical to its success. Happier cows are indeed better producers. Some cows had very definite preferences for particular milkers! Thus, the dairy owner tried to keep his milkers happy and well-paid. Many milkers at the ADC (and later American Jersey Ranch) worked there for 20 years or more. The ADC management extended this care and respect to other employees as well.
Women and girls were responsible for all of the cooking for family and hired hands, laundry and sewing; child-rearing, and other domestic chores. On a family-run dairy, women and girls did as much of the dairy work as men and boys, and still performed all the household chores that men did not do.
Read The Dairy Cow's Keeper, from Bulletin of the Associated Milk
