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Bill Herr: "I milked 40 head of cows before I went to school in the morning"

Brothers Bill and Don Herr talk about working on the farm in the 1950s

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Bill Herr remembers: We had dairy, hogs, and 200 over Leghorn chickens. When I was a senior in high school I milked 40 head of cows before I went to school in the morning. In 1964, when we finally sold the cattle we had 37 cows.

Don Herr describes the milking process: We’d milk twice a day. We had a pipe line. We had a milking parlor. We’d walk in six cows and would milk three at once. While three were being milked the other three would wait.

The milkers would set underneath the cows and when they were done we’d swing them over to the next cows. We had a 3700 gallon tank where we stored the milk. It was big enough that we had to build an extension on to the milk house to get it in there.

A good cow in a day’s time will give 7 to 14 gallons of milk. Before we acquired the tank, we stored the milk in 10-gallon cans in a big cooler.

This is a sample of the content of "Bluffton Anthology - A creek runs through it." Copies are now available for $24.95 plus tax in Bluffton at:
• Roots by Strattons
• The Food Store
• The Black Lab
• Bluffton Senior Citizens Center
• The Dough Hook
• Polished
• The Inn at ONU, Ada

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