LORD HAMPDEN’S DAIRY FARMING

‘D’, writing in the Pall Mall Gazette, says the other day he readily accepted Lord Hamden’s invitation to go down to Glynde on a visit of inspection, and he thus describes what he saw:

‘A striking feature in the new system of dairy farming is the all-importance of machinery; at Glynde neither butter nor cream is once touched by the human hand. The ‘factory’ resounds with the harsh voices of men and the reverberation of machinery, while on the farm the dairymaid – that last link between the old and the new – from being a kind of queenly despot, occupies a comparatively inferior position.

But there is another aspect to Lord Hampden’s dairy farming. Making two ears of corn grow where but one grew before is held to deserve the guerdon [reward] of good deeds; and something similar to this is being accomplished at Glynde. Butter and cream are produced in one-half the time and with one-half the labour and with double the certainty as to the value of the result than was the case a very few years ago. The crowning achievement of scientific dairy farming – the separation of cream from milk by a mechanical process – is fully availed of by Lord Hampden. He has two of the Danish centrifuges, which have a rotary motion equal to 4,000 revolutions a minute. They not only effect an instantaneous partition of the cream from the milk, but also remove any dust or dirt the latter may contain.

Lord Hampden told us that as much as 5½ lb of matter foreign to the constituents of milk are taken out of every 1,000 gallons in this way. The distinction between skim milk and separated milk, as a cheap beverage for the working classes, was explained by him thus: ‘Skim milk, by the time the cream is extracted from it, becomes sour and impalatable; separated milk, being obtainable immediately after milking is as fresh and pure as the cream’. As the milk by the new method is just as cheap and nutritious, the importance of the invention to the welfare of the poor people will be understood without further explanation. Lord Hampden has also brought into requisition every other utensil and appliance which has lately been invented for the purposes of dairy farming. There are coolers to keep the milk cool in summer, heaters to make it arm in winter, butter-workers and churns of improved pattern, ventilating fans that revolve with great velocity, and steam jets for rinsing all utensils, the motor for the whole of the machinery being an engine of 8-horse power. Butter-making at Glynde is, as we have said, a purely mechanical process. When the cream issues from the separating machine it passes over refrigerating pipes, which reduce its temperature from 90 degrees to 60 degrees. The cream is transferred to the churn, when it is converted into butter by mechanical power, and thence it passes to the Delateuse butter worker. Now it is salted, and then removed to what is known on the farm as the old dairy, where another machine disposes of the butter in various shapes and sizes. The centrifugal machine seperates the cream from 115 gallons of milk in an hour, so that this process of butter-making is consequently very rapid.

Now for some statistics. The farm is of 600 to 700 acres. The stock numbers seventy cows, and a large number of heifers. The cows are all of the Jersey breed, with the exception of twenty shorthorns, Lord Hampden emphatically declaring ‘the Jerseys to be the best breed for the production of the richest milk’. The production of milk at the time of our visit had been about 200 gallons daily, but of course it had been season of exceptional sterility owing to the long drought. The Jersey herd is to be increased, too, as twenty-five heifers in calf come to maturity. The cows are fed upon steamed food, and turned out to grass for a few hours every day, winter and summer.

As I walked over the fields I had a chat with Lord Hampden’s estate agent. Lord Hampden, it seems, lets allotments to all his labourers; he is a popular landlord, and actively supervises all the affairs of the estate..

In his dealings with the tenants, I was told, he is just but firm, characteristics that he doubtless acquired in the House of Commons.