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14 Dairy on the Prairie
Rapid Changes in the Dairy THE SILO THE CREAM SEPARATOR
Industry
Today, a cow produces milk most of the year, and For the first decade of eastern Iowa creamery op-
As the dairy industry evolved and became more birthing is staggered so every herd has cows giving erations, most facilities operated on the whole-milk
efficient, both the business and personal lives of farm- milk year-round. This practice was not the case until system. Farmers delivered their milk once or twice
ers changed. Dairy farms were transformed from la- the arrival of silage (a.k.a., "green fodder," usually daily to the factory, and returned home with the man-
bor-intensive businesses to capital-intensive ones. made from chopped-up green corn stalks, clover, ufacturing by-products (whey or skim milk), which
Some changes were foisted upon farmers by the fac- grasses, or a mixture of these), which keeps cows pro- was fed to the livestock. As of 1881, all nine of the
tories, and others were innovative solutions by farm- ducing milk through the winter. Almost without ex- Diamond Creameries in Jones County operated on this
ers themselves. A few of the more profound changes ception before 1870 and in most cases before 1880, system, as did all 40 creameries in Delaware Coun-
are detailed here. cows' udders dried up during the winter months. ty.47
Hence, the milking season lasted from mid-spring to
late-fall. This fact is reflected in the earliest cheese and In the 1880s, a dairying revolution took placed,
butter factories, which operated only seasonally. termed by farmers as the New Departure—indicat-
ing a basic change in farm methodology.48 This change
Silos were introduced to Illinois in 1875 and to Iowa involved creameries purchasing cream, instead of
a few years later. These modern farm fixtures did not whole milk.
gain widespread acceptance until around the Gustav de Laval invented the high speed centrifu-
turn-of-the-last-century, as farmers worried the gal cream separator in Sweden in 1878. The cream
untried method would adversely affect animal separator was introduced to Iowa in 1882 by Jeppe
health. Grain bins, which have been around for Slifsgaard, a Danish immigrant who operated the
hundreds of years, required that the stored grain Fredsville Creamery in Grundy County.49 Initially,
be dried to reduce spoilage. Silos, however, only creameries could afford the machines. Within
two decades, however, most dairy farmers owned a
were air-tight and could preserve green fodder small-sized cream separator. In 1898, there were a re-
for a long period. The invention of silos would ported 904 farm separators in Iowa; by 1905, there
have profound implications for the life of ev- were more than 40,000.50 Farm separators meant only
ery dairy farmer: a single technological ad- the cream was taken to the factory, and farmers could
vance (silos) meant the farmer would now feed the still-warm skim milk to their livestock, which
was healthier as
have to milk his cows during the spoilage was less
winter. likely.
Library ofCongress, Prints and Pho- Farmer operating a
tographs Collection, FSA/OWI Collec- cream separator at
tion. Top silo: Arthur Rothstein, home. Russell Lee,
photographer, 1939. LC-USF34- photographer, 1941.
029045D. Bottom silo: Russell Lee, LC-USF 34-039721-
photographer, 1936. LC-USF33- D.
011091-M5.
