Page 4 - DairyOnThePrairie

2 Dairy on the Prairie

Dairy Production in Jones
County and Northeastern

Iowa Today

Dairy cows appeared in Iowa from an early date, Cows grazing in the pasture. Courtesy of State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City.
with the United States Dragoons having at least one
milk-producing "beeve" on their 1835 expedition creamery counties of that era included Fayette, Linn, ry. By 1905, there were 49,130 such machines in the
through central Iowa.1 Archaeological excavations of Delaware, Black Hawk, Mitchell, Chickasaw, and state, a huge increase from 1898 when there were just
a fur trading post of the same period, south of Iowa Buchanan. By 1895, Jones County had dropped to 8th 904 in use. Half of the butter produced in 1905 came
City, suggests the trader also had a milk-producing place with 18 creameries while neighboring Delaware from hand-separated cream. In Iowa, where a hogs-
cow.2 Early Iowa settlers often brought at least one County had the most, with 29 creameries.3 A handful and-corn farm economy had developed, butter's by-
dairy cow with them upon moving to the state, or of the 1890s and later creamery buildings remain in product of skimmed milk was important, due to its
acquired one or more shortly after. In this manner, Jones County today, although all are used for non- feeding value. Because of the emphasis on livestock
individual farms could meet their own milk, cream, dairy purposes, such as storage, housing, or commer- raising in the Corn Belt, butter-making and not cheese-
butter, and cheese needs. cial use. One cheese factory building may also remain, making came to dominate the dairy industry in the
although it has been moved off of its original cheese state, even in the great dairying region of northeast
Starting in the mid-1860s, cheese factories were factory site. Iowa. During the early 1900s, northeast Iowa farmers
organized in Iowa, followed in the next decade by also led the way in adopting new practices such as
butter factories or creameries. These commercial es- Consolidation in Iowa's dairy industry can be the use of ensilage and scientific feeding, being en-
tablishments pooled the milk resources of neighbor- traced to the beginning of the twentieth century and couraged to do so by farm editors and the new Iowa
ing farmers to produce a surplus and in short order the introduction of the hand separator. Invented by State Agricultural and Experiment Station in Ames.4
encouraged farmers to increase their herds and im- the De Laval Company, in 1885, its use did not be-
prove their milk quality. Cheese had a local market, come widespread in Iowa until the turn of the centu- The quick adoption of the hand-separator by farm-
while butter was often shipped out-of-state, particu-
larly to the East Coast. These first establishments usu-
ally collected milk from dairy farmers living within a
three-mile radius of the factory. By the 1880s, cheese
factories were disappearing from the Iowa landscape
and consolidated creamery companies arose. Cream-
ery co-operatives were formed to counterbalance what
many dairy farmers viewed as unfair cream and milk
payments by the largest of the consolidated creamer-
ies.

Jones County is located near the southern bound-
ary of Iowa's most dairy-intensive farming region. In
pounds of butter produced, the county ranked be-
tween 11th and 23rd of Iowa's 99 counties between
1860 and 1895. Using number of creameries per county
to determine leadership, Jones County ranked in 1st
place in 1887 (with 41 creameries). Other leading