Milk Can Stirrer (Pics)

Last night's milk can measuring stick post made me think I have a stirrer and farmerwithmutt wanted pics.

Thanks that brings back memories im surprised what stuff shows up .
Next question does anybody remember hand stripping and why.

Ve milked all our cows by hand and had to strip oat every drop

I have a whole set of stuff, Cans with Dad, GrandDad, FIL names stamped in them, stirrer, suppurator, scale, Butter churns. Been going to fix them up for display. Will have to take pictures.

Hand stripping was back in the day when machines first came out you always finnished up by hand to avoid over milking. there are some adds for inflations on how the would minimize hand milking

That would be a fasinating display very important that story is told. there is a story about a teacher asked the students if a cow gave 40 lbs of milk a day how much would she give in a week ? the comman answer is 200 you only work 5 days right ? So please tell our story the guys that milked with cans .thanks larry

Where can I get cows that milk 5 days a week? HEHE

The recent discussions about milk cans, measuring rod and the can stirrers have been very interesting. I'm surprised no one had mentioned milk chillers. In case some of you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll explain.
When the hot milk was carried into the milkhouse it was a good idea to cool it as quick as possible. We had,and I still have a chiller. It consists of a rack mounted to the wall with a receiving tank sitting on top which would hold about 10 gallons of milk. On the front of the tank was a spigot to adjust of the milk coming out. Under the spigot was a pan about 4" wide and about 2' long. This pan had several holes drilled along the bottom. Below this pan was the chiller which was a rack of 10 or 12 1"pipes soldered together and then dipped in a tinning solution to make them easy to clean and sanitary. This rack of pipes had an inlet and outlet, inlet on the top pipe and outlet on the bottom pipe. Cold well water, spring water or we used the chilled water out of the can cooler. The water was circulated from the top to the bottom with a small pump. Below this rack of pipes was another pan, like the one on the top but this pan only had one hole in the center. Below this hole would be the 10 gallon milk can, sitting on the floor. We had a strainer sitting on top of the receiving tank and would pour the hot milk through the strainer into the tank. Then when the tank was full, open the spigot, the milk would flow into the top pan and exit through the small hole in the bottom of the pan. As the milk flowed over the pipe rack in a thin film the milk was cooled to the temperature of the water inside the pipes. It was so cold as it entered the milk can it would make your teeth ache if you drank some. Then after milking everything had to be taken to the was tubs and washed and be ready for the next milking. Then the cans full of milk would be lowered into the water filled can cooler which held 5 cans. Then on the pickup days we would load the cans on a cart and push the cart to the end of the driveway for the truck to pick up.
I've seen several different variations of these chillers as well as the can coolers but these were most common around here.
As explained to me, it was best to cool the milk as soon as possible and keep it cold and it was last for over a week as long as everything was kept clean and sanitary.
In later years bulk tanks came into the picture and did the same job. With cooling coils between the layers of the tank or an ice bank below the tank and the agitator, the milk would be cooled quickly.
Even these days one of these chillers would be great for a small dairy or a herd of milk goats.
I hope I made this clear how the chiller worked for those who've never seen one. Nowadays with stainless steel one could be made rather easily.

Dick

Thats the part I didn't like was hand stripping. Always did it.

Milked all my life and never heard of that before. we had a cement tank in the milkhouse for cooling . By the way people are talking milking is a lost art.

Harvey, looks like your hands are still cramping from it ! JK

We used a milk stirrer before we dipped milk out for our own use. As for stripping, Dad said the butter fat came last and We needed it. I have never seen a quick cooler. Our can cooler was a six can with cooling tubes around the outside of the water tank and it had an ice bank in the back.

Uncle had spring fed, rock walled milkhouse built into the side of a hill. Had a concrete floor and a concrete walled tank that was about 8' x 3' x 2' dp, with a weir so that water was continually flowing through tank. Used it for years (into the late '50s) with no problems. Water was always cold to the point you didn't want your hands in it for more than a minute or so, or they would turn blue; excellent drinking water also. He got out of the business when bulk systems were mandated by government.

Back in Europe we to had a concrete milk cool tank that doubled as reservoir for water for the cows and used as our bath tub well into the sixty's.
The tank was filled with a hand pump and had a plug in the bottom one could pull out so the water flowed to the feed troughs.
We watered the 24 cows twice a day.(it was my job to fill the tank twice daily)
The cooling feature was hardly ever used cause the milk truck came twice a day,7 Am and 7 PM.
I still have a stirring stick as well as a strainer.

I had an old guy on the route who got a hair in his backside for a while and thought he had to use one of those in every can before I took them. He wasn't happy with his test.
Fact is,all the cans were dumped mechanically and quite violently through a stainless steel screen that looked like the screen in the strainer,except without a pad. Then the sample was taken from the tank after all the cans belonging to a single patron were dumped. I guess he finally stopped when he realized it didn't make any difference.

I had 2 of those milk can stirers years ago. Old Mike Cannavino gave them to me, they were brand new. Mike ran the tinning works for the Rynone family in Waverly until it closed. Mike said a company in the midwest shipped 50 or 60 of them to the tinning works to be re-tinned after they were damaged in a warehouse fire in the late 50s. They finished the work and found out the company went out of business. Mike gave them away on occasion, said they made great back scratchers. This was in my jr year of high school and my first job off the farm. I worked next to the tinning works during the summer. At that time Rynone's was the last tinning works in the U.S. That place was a nasty place to visit much less work.

I wonder if that's where the cans went from here to be retinned? I never knew where they got sent,only that we sent them to be "retinned.

Wouldn't be surprised if it was. Rynone's did all repairs including name stamping in the cans and lids. Mike showed me how it was done. I could hardly breath in that place, but that didn't stop me from taking the time to learn how a few lost arts were done. I don't think Mike died of lung problems, don't think he had any lungs left to have problems with.

Anyone have knowledge of , where I could purchase, a milk can stirrer. My father was a milk tester for 40 years and died in 1960. Have been searching fir a stirrer for some time niw. Thanks