Quebec Dairy Barns circa 1930

Most of the images for this post come from a book of livestock and crop handling hardware. The Beatty Brothers of Fergus, Ontario were major suppliers of these items and this undated catalog of their wares is probably from around 1930 - judging from some of the notations in it. I bought it at Lombardy, Ontario, at a small souvenir shop. I suspect it hadn't travelled very far from its original rural home before that.

Above, you see typical hardware for use in a horse stable.
Horses were often used as heavy draft animals in cities and in the countryside.
After World War 2, when higher capacity motor vehicles and all-weather roads became
more common, horses were replaced by trucks and tractors.

A notable effect of horses employed in ploughing fields
was how much quieter they were when compared to gasoline tractors.

These stanchions were still in use on the farm I worked on in the 1970s. 

Chain ties later provided more freedom of movement for the cows during the long winter months.

During the 1930s, wooden stanchions were probably common on smaller farms.

A smaller stall could be used to house a number of calves or to isolate a cow just before calving.

A prize cow might be given its own stall.

These images are often heavily airbrushed.
The messy manger area was usually strewn with hay
and fugitive particles from the cows' grain ration.

You can see gravity water bowls here.
A centralized reservoir, elsewhere in the barn, was plumbed through to each one.
As the cows drank, the water would maintain its own level throughout the barn.

While city visitors liked like to look at the cows' heads,
it was at their tailends where things really happened.

Of course, milking was the most important process - it paid for everything.

As well, a considerable volume of metabolic byproducts were handled here.
In contrast to the horse stable above, you can see that dairy barns have deeper gutters
because the waste products of cows contain considerably more liquid.

The monorail-style litter carrier was an effective, mid-technology system
for removing manure and soiled bedding.
I was told that some earlier stable hands even supplied 'CPR sound effects'
... including air brakes ... as they stopped and started the carrier,
and operated it over the track switches.
A litter carrier filled with wet manure was very heavy.

An earlier lower-tech process was to fork the waste into a wheelbarrow and dump it
outside, onto a manure spreader for distribution in the fields.

*  *  *

In the 1960s, electric stable cleaners used an endless chain of metal paddles
to scrape the waste along the gutters and up an incline
to drop it into the manure spreader - without requiring any kind of manual effort.

... One checked to ensure cows and people were clear of the chain before pressing the button,
then the lights dimmed for a second
as the electric motor strained against the inertia
of two days' accumulation of waste and soiled bedding.

This is the process for loading manure spreaders via monorail litter carriers.
You pressed a release lever and the top-heavy carrier swung down with considerable force to empty.
You didn't want to have a leg in the path of the emptying carrier!

In winter, manure sleighs were often used instead of wheeled vehicles.
Farm workers forked the contents onto the snow as the sleigh travelled over a designated field.

*  *  *

To improve the efficiency of farming, 'public sector research' was essential
to increase the hardiness and productivity of farm cultivars and livestock breeds.
Because of the contrasting characteristics of Canada's ...
soils ... climate & growing season ... farming cultures ...
much of this research was tailored to meet the needs of farmers in that region.

In turn, this improved the profits of farmers,
... who could then purchase better farm implements ... and barn hardware.

National tariffs generally protected domestic farm equipment manufacturers ...
and the domestic coal and steel industries which supplied them.

Here are the facilities which produced Beatty Brothers products.
Compared to number of photos of Ontario farms,
there were relatively few images of Quebec farms in this book.

As potential customers,
perhaps Quebec farmers had lower net incomes for purchasing modern barn hardware systems
(eg. because of smaller farm/herd size or religious tithing).

Or maybe the linguistic and cultural differences made Quebec dairy farmers
less interested in having their operations 'known' in anglo-Canada (via this book).

from: Quebec 1850-1950; Lionel Koffler; 2005; Firefly Books.

Farmers in the 1800s relied on local help - including nearby carpenters and blacksmiths -
for building construction and hardware maintenance.

Modern agricultural practice used construction professionals
to design the most efficient layouts
and to develop the best construction methods for buildings
... as seen in this erection of a modern barn design.

Small fir trees also served as celebratory 'punctuation' when new mines entered production.
When the first trainload of ore left the mine, a fir would be placed on the locomotive's pilot.

from: Quebec 1850-1950; Lionel Koffler; 2005; Firefly Books.

Seen above in 1943, the Canadienne cow was developed from the original livestock
brought from France to New France in the 1600s.
Over the decades and centuries, it was bred for hardiness - to survive cold Canadian winters.
Its milk was relatively rich in protein and fat so the milk 'food value' could be preserved as cheese.
It was also a good producer of red meat.

Around the 1880s, as more specialized milk cow breeds were introduced,
(developed in the British Isles or continental Europe)
 there was concern that the Canadienne breed might become 'extinct'
and efforts began to preserve the breed.

It was estimated in 1883 that 75% of Quebec's milk herd had 'no foreign blood'.