IH milkers

Anyone here ever use them and were they good, how were the vacume pumps? When did IH stop making milkers? Would enjoy hering your storys about them.

Hi, we had IH milker from early 1940s until replaced in mid 1950s with Surge individual pail milkers. The IH milker had one large pail with pulsator on the lid. The milker milked two cows at once and guessing the pail held 5 or more gallons of milk and was very heavy if you milked two good producing cows. The vacuum pump was a single piston type driven by an electric motor. We continued to use the IH vacuum pump until the 1970s.

JimB

We used IH milkers on our Grade A dairy farm in central Nebraska from 1948 until we replaced them with a Surge pipeline milker (early 60's???) One bucket held five (or was it six???) gallons, but was only for one cow (not equipped to milk two in the same bucket). Those buckets were darn heavy when full and with the stainless steel bucket, pulsator and all hoses probably weighed about 70 pounds. Also our Holsteins gave too much milk for more than one cow per bucket.

I remember we carried each bucket from the milking area into a separate room, to the bulk milk cooler, removed the top, then stepped on a couple of concrete blocks and poured the milk into the strainer. What a lift that was!

I remember that in the winters on cold days it was very hard to make the pulsators work. We had to remove a cap on top of the pulsator and use a finger to manually move the "innards" back and forth until it warmed up. And sometimes the electric motor couldn"t start the vacuum pump it was so cold!(oil so stiff). In the early years the folks had a model a ford. It had a regular water faucet installed on the intake manifold. The idea was that if the electricity failed, they could use a garden hose to provide vacuum for the milking machines. I don"t recall they ever used that system. Electrical failures were very rare on our farm in the 50"s to 80"s.

Glad to think of milking twice a day every day of the year. It reminds me of why I haven"t missed it since leaving the farm.

This brings back some memories. The first thing I would do when entering the barn was to flip the switch on the compressor. This was also a surge system but had IH stuck all over it ?

This compressor (vacuum) was about the size of a typical roll around model only mounted over head. Lines where charged to 15 lbs and a black leather strap was tossed over the cow to hang your milker on. This system only milked one cow per setup and we normally ran 2 or 3 cows/milkers at a time.

To answer your question the vacuum pump was flawless. It never failed and it always worked. The pulsators would need a little attention to keep them running free but nothing really ever failed.

The inflations and hoses needed to be changed out once a year or more but that was due to the states grade requirements.

A strainer sat atop a 10 gallon stainless can. We never separated cream and what was sold was raw milk. Each milking, 2 times a day would produce about 2 cans of milk. Simply lift your full milker over the can .. and the strainer to pour without dumping it all over.

Cans were floated in a cold water bath till the milkman, who came once every day, would drop off empty and take our filled ones. In the winter months it was always critical to keep a path open for the milk man too. If it was at all possible he would be there.

At age 17 was the cutoff for going large commercial bulk or get out of the business entirely. Needless to say I was relieved at what my father decided. I ready did have my fill of milking and it was truly a lot of heavy work.

Even worse .. the cows never ever took a day off!

I used to milk with my Dads 4 cow sawtooth herringbone set-up,but when Dad was a kid they had a Surge set-up with compressor in the barn,and 4 stanchions,before that my Grandpa milked in an old hay barn,had a petcock on the old M Farmall for vaccum just in case the lights went out,which happened a lot in those days