By Mary Hutching

In the early days of settlement, a typical day for many Taranaki children consisted of rising at dawn to catch and milk half a dozen cows.

When this was done, they had to walk 5-10 kilometres to their nearest school.  Needless to say there wasn't much energy left for learning and no time at all for play. 

At the end of the day children faced another long walk home with more milking in the evening.

One national newspaper of the day called these children "the country's own special white slave traffic".

Milk Maids: Children ready for milking on an Opunake farm in 1913.

Effects on schooling

While some teachers accepted the responsibilities of farm children, others were concerned about the effects on their learning.

At Whenuakura School in 1902, the schoolmaster was asked by the truant inspector to keep a record of the children who were engaged in milking.
 
The resulting table showed the age of the child, distance from school, the state of the road, days in attendance and the number of cows milked. 

The children ranged from 9-14 years and the average number of cows milked was 8.36. More than 38% of the children attending Whenuakura School milked cows.  The distance to school was usually between one and three miles.

Cow Pats

The hardships of milking are depicted clearly by Frank Sargeson in his 1964 story Cow Pats.

"We had to get up early to milk, but we didn't think we were hardly done by.  As I've said we didn't know any other sort of life. But what sticks in my mind are the seasons when our boots wouldn't be any too good... But one of my brothers found out a good way of warming his feet up. He stuck them into a cowpat that had just been dropped and he said it made his feet feel bosker and warm.  So we all stuck our feet into cow pats, and after walking over the frost it was bosker and warm sure enough..."

Pull The Other One: A boy working in a 1930s milking shed.

Spanking the Cow

It wasn't just women and children who found the going tough.  Men weren't immune to the hardships either. This is clearly illustrated in an extract from a 1897 article in the New Zealand Farmer on "Cow Spanking in Taranaki".

"Milking isn't hard work!  Wait till you have to milk 120 between six – especially when the boss and you are the only man, the others being the missus and kids.  Your wrists start first; they ache worse than they would with a days shearing.  Then after a day or two, your hands swell, you get cramp in them - in the mornings you can hardly straighten your fingers.  You are always pretty certain to get cowpox; likewise your nails fester.  That's one thing about Taranaki; I don't think a man in the district could get smallpox – not if smallpox was the only disease left in the universe."

Mass Milking. Everyone pitches in to get the herd milked at Wilmshurst's cowshed, Kahouri Bridge, Stratford, in 1902.