Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of livestock, but within two decades, the milk cow would surpass everything else on four
hooves.
Myriadfactorsinfluenced theearlytrendtowarddairy.MostoftheEuropeanimmigrant
farmers, many of them dairy farmers in the old country, found the topography and climate
in Wisconsin similar to those of their homelands. Transplanted Yankees had seen it before
in New York and Vermont and knew a dairy revolution was coming. Led by foresighted
dairying advocate William Hoard and his germinal journal,
Hoard's Dairyman,
and by the
new Wisconsin Dairymen's Association, farmers began adding dairy cattle to their other
crops and livestock until, by 1899, 90 percent of Wisconsin's farmers were keeping cows
predominantly.
Butter production initially led the new industry, since it was easier to keep than milk.
But technology and industrialization, thanks in large part to the University of Wisconsin
Scientific Agriculture Institute, propelled Wisconsin into milk, cheese, and other dairy-
product prominence. The institute was responsible for extending the dairy season, introdu-
cing several highly productive new methods, and the groundbreaking 1890 Babcock but-
terfat test—a simple method of chemically separating and centrifuging milk samples to de-
termine their quality, thereby ensuring farmers were paid based on the quality and not just
the weight of the milk.
AMERICA'S DAIRYLAND
Surprise, surprise: Dairying was not the first gear in the state's agricultural ma-
chine—wheat was. Wisconsin was a leading world wheat producer and exporter
through the 1870s.
Inauspiciously, the state's initial forays into home butter (and cheese) were deris-
ively called Western Grease. Wisconsin cattle were initially miscegenational hybrids
of hardier species. Milk production was hardly a necessity.
THE BIRTH OF A STEREOTYPE
In the 1850s, transplanted New York farmers organized the first commercial cheese-
making factory systems. In addition, the first experiments in modern herd manage-
ment and marketing were undertaken. One New Yorker, Chester Hazen, opened a
cheese factory in Ladoga and in 1864, its first year, it produced 200,000 pounds.
