Dairy
farm’s end
stopped wonder
bra for milk
cows
By W. T.
Block
Reprinted
from Beaumont
Enterprise,
Saturday
February 13,
1999.
NEDERLAND—Please
mo-o-ve over,
my
editorialist
friend Dave
Grimes
(Enterprise,
Jan. 30) and
permit me to
tell you about
the world’s
second-ranking
milk producers
in Nederland.
Lohmann
Brothers, who
owned Port
Arthur’s Home
Laundry, also
owned two
cattle
businesses,
one of them
being the
Lohmann Ranch
at Hamshire.
The
other business
was the
Lohmann
Brothers Dairy
at Nederland,
which in 1935
occupied all
the land now
owned by
Doornbos Park,
Hillcrest
Elementary
School, and a
few
neighboring
sub-divisions.
The
dairy owned a
herd of sixty
registered,
highly in-bred
Guernsey cows,
the best of
which could
only produce
13 gallons of
milk daily.
And unlike the
record-breaking
cow Lucy,
which had to
drag its
12-foot-long
udder across
the
prickly-pear
pastures of
North
Carolina, the
Lohmann cows
got to stay in
the big cow
barn all day
to eat their
three square
meals.
I
remember too
that I was
infinitely
qualified to
discuss cow
udders because
in my youth, I
had emptied at
least 10,000
of them,
entirely by
hand and
without the
convenience of
those
huff-puff
machines.
I
suppose one of
the joys of
farm life was
to squirt long
streams of
warm milk all
over the
barnyard cats’
heads and
watch them
lick each
other bone
dry.
Lohmann
Brothers were
cognizant of
the bovine
pain caused by
a cow’s udder
holding six
gallons of
milk. So they
devised a
"bovine
brassiere,"
made of burlap
sacks, to
transfer the
weight to the
cow’s
backbone.
As
I sometimes
walked through
the big
Lohmann dairy
barn, I
thought surely
this place
must be
"bovine
heaven."
Lights were
never turned
off there
because the
cows’ third
daily milking
was at
midnight.
A
host of dairy
employees
worked on
shifts to keep
the barn
scrupulously
clean, weigh
and deliver
the cow feed
ingredients,
weigh milk and
keep accurate
records for
each cow, hook
up and empty
the milking
machines, and
scour all
machinery.
However
the dairy herd
may have been
weekend by
inbreeding,
which
accounted for
the frequent
veterinarian
visits. The
herd reacted
to extremes of
rain and cold,
resulting in
distemper-like
illnesses, so
they stayed
all day in the
barn.
Dairying
was both a
sideline for
the Lohmann
Brothers, as
well as an
experiment in
livestock
breeding and
milk
production.
Eventually
they grew
weary of the
venture, and
they sold out
in 1939 to
Walling Jersey
Farm, which
quickly
disposed of
the Guernsey
herd.
In
1935,
Nederland was
"Dairyland
USA," for
Rayford
Guzardo, the
feed store
man, counted
36 dairies
that were once
located within
two miles of
the Nederland
post office.
The
passing of the
dairy in 1939
was a sad day
for me too,
for I was just
preparing to
install
machinery to
manufacture
from burlap
the "bovine
brassieres"
for the
Lohmann cows.
However World
War II came
along about
that time, and
I quickly and
"udderly"
forgot all
about my
cattle
brassiere
plans.
W.
T. Block of
Nederland is a
historian and
author. His
website is
http://block.dynip.com/wtblockjr/ This database is very large (350 articles)
and is
intended as an
area history
source for
students.
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