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THE RENTED DAIRY

A study of the Ordnance Survey Maps will show, particularly in the West Country an abundance of Dairy Houses. The visitor to the countryside will assume quite rightly that these places are or were the site of a dairy farm producing milk or milk products. To the man and his family who lived and worked in these places they were the first step on the agricultural ladder for those who wanted independence and the opportunity to climb that ladder. The system worked in this way.

A farmer, he could be an owner occupier or a tenant farmer, offered for rent a Dairy (herd) of cows. The number could be anything but here in Dorset the average was between twenty and thirty. The rent per cow per year ranged from £3..5..Od (£3.25) in 1745 - Barbara Kerr in “‘Bound to the Soil” quoting a dairy at Askerswell - to £42 in 196 1. This rent was payable quarterly in advance and most agreements started on the second or fourteenth of February each year. The agreement to continue in the following year was made at the end of the third quarter to enable either side to make other arrangements if necessary.

The historical dairy i.e. pre 1950, was, without exception a summer dairy producing low cost milk to be turned into butter or cheese by the dairyman’s wife. This provided skimmed milk or whey for feeding to pigs. The cheese, the butter and the pigs had to be taken to market so that the dairyman needed a horse and the rent he paid covered not only the stable for the horse but the dairy house, milking sheds, suitable accommodation for the making of butter or cheese and storage of the latter, piggeries and of course the garden. Shortage of piggeries often meant that the pigs were put in the cow sheds and the cows milked in the open in the yard. The Farmer provided sufficient hay and straw for the cows, the horse and a certain amount of cake, generally cotton but sometimes linseed too although the amount rarely came to more than two hundred-weight per cow.

Unless the cows were exceptional and the Dairyman was a very good manager the money made did little more than pay the rent and provide a meagre living for himself and his family. The real profit came from the pigs which cost very little to feed living almost wholly on skim or whey with a little barley meal. A flock of laying hens and other poultry would provide further income. It was not until the end of the historic period that artificial fertilizers became popular so that no provision for them was made in the contracts. This meant that in a late season it could be well into May before there was sufficient grass for the cows. This had an obvious effect on the dairy income as it would mean more cake had to be purchased, the cost of which would be shared between the Farmer and the Dairyman.

Agreements entered into provided for definite numbers of cows to be in milk by stipulated dates and the whole dairy to have calved and be in milk by 1st April. A penalty of five shillings (25p) per cow per week was paid by the Farmer to the Dairyman for all cows still dry at the agreed dates. Barren cows were returned to the owner by a set date - generally the end of November - and fresh calvers considered unfit for their purpose had to be returned within a fortnight of calving when they would be replaced or the rent adjusted. In 1929 the cost of replacing a cow was equal to the rent per cow for the year i.e. seventeen to eighteen pounds. Although a cow not replaced meant a reduction in the rent it also meant a reduction in the dairy income.

Arrangements for calves within the contracts varied a great deal. Some dairymen kept all the calves and produced dairy fed veal. Some Farmers claimed all calves born and would pay a bonus for all calves returned alive. In other cases the Farmer demanded sufficient heifer calves to be reared by the dairyman to be used as replacements for the herd. These were either moved from the dairy when weaned or sold back to the Farmer at valuation when they were fit to go to grass, (Thirteen pounds in 1929).

The dairying business was essentially a young man’s job, his family life revolving around it, his wife making butter or cheese and the children learning to milk almost as soon as they could walk and certainly they milked twice daily when they were at school. Any village school log book will contain complaints by the Headmaster of children being late or having to leave early because of the milking. As time went on and the sons decided to take a dairy of their own the parents, nearing retirement would move in to help their children. Because of the small size of business of most of the Rented Dairies the butter and cheese had to be marketed by the Dairyman himself in the local towns. Cheese factors who travelled around buying cheese were not generally interested in small quantities.

Since 1950 dairy farming has undergone a radical reshaping and become very big business indeed, the emphasis now being on Autumn or all the year round calving.

Despite this there are apparently one or two dairies still being let on the basis of the foregoing but the old contracts are being replaced by what is now termed a Joint Management Agreement. This is in some respects similar to the old agreements - the rent per cow is now £80 - and the arrangements for providing and replacing cows remains as does the provision of a dairy house and premises but here the similarity ends. The modern dairyman has to “provide from the dairy lands all necessary hay and silage and to purchase all other feed as is required by the cows and calves and to provide and spread such artificial fertilizers as he may require.11 He also has to pay the rates on the property which in the past was paid by the Farmer. He is now responsible for hedges and fences and for half the cost of any cow that dies. He has to provide his own tractor and equipment necessary to do the work required.

The Joint Management Agreement is a new innovation but Contract Milking where the dairyman is paid an agreed price per gallon, has been going for sometime now and would appear to be a better bet than the Joint Management Agreement. As a Contract Milker the dairyman will have few responsibilities apart from the cows and if he is, as is probable, single handed, he will be able to milk more cows and thus achieve an equal or even higher net income than the partner in a Joint Management Scheme.

ADDENDUM

The formation of the Milk Marketing Board in 1934 created a bigger demand for liquid milk, i.e., Milk Bars and the School Milk Scheme. This, together with the development of an efficient road haulage system meant that milk could be collected from all farms and heralded the demise of farmhouse cheese and butter making. Small quantities of both were sold in the weekly markets up to the outbreak of war in 1939 when the introduction of food rationing stopped it. With very few exceptions milk has been sold in liquid form off the farms ever since.