Image Caption: By 1926 the Winterthur herd consisted of more than 300 registered Holsteins.
Farming operations—including a dairy herd, animal husbandry, and crops to feed both humans and animals—formed an important component of life at Winterthur while it was a private home. Cows were a part of the Winterthur landscape from its earliest days, when the Bidermann family lived here, grazing contentedly in the shadow of the mansion. H. F.’s father, the next owner, maintained the dairy herd but then began to specialize in Holstein-Friesian cattle, considered to be the most prolific milkers.
When H. F. became farm manager in 1914, he turned his attention to creating a first-class dairy herd. In 1917, after thorough research and investigation, he chose a herd in Minnesota as the best stock to begin his breeding program. He purchased four bulls and two cows for the astounding sum of $70,000 (about $1.6 million today). That group became known at Winterthur as the “Foundation Herd.”
Although long prized for the amount of milk they provided, Holsteins did not produce milk with a high butterfat content, which was a desirable quality at that time. To improve the butterfat content in the milk, du Pont began a program of scientific breeding, mating the best bulls and cows and strictly adhering to an intensive registry-testing program. His farm manager carefully recorded the results in “Herd Books.” The success of du Pont’s scientific approach to breeding, registry testing, and meticulous record keeping resulted in an astonishing number of awards and citations for the Winterthur herd.
By 1926 the herd consisted of 300 registered Holsteins, and average milk production was 11,000 pounds per year per cow. A Winterthur cow, Winterthur Boast Ormsby Ganne, broke the fat yield record in 1933 by producing 1004.2 pounds of butterfat from 23,444.6 pounds of milk.
To house his herd, du Pont constructed a huge barn complex at the top of Farm Hill, including two bull barns, a hospital barn, and a calf barn. After a disastrous fire in 1929 that destroyed most of the Farm Hill complex, the barns were rebuilt on a smaller scale. Staff included a farm manager, resident veterinarian, dairy manager, and herdsmen. A creamery across from the dairy barn could process 10,000 pounds of milk a day. An electric cable tramway capable of transferring six milk cans at a time connected the second level of the dairy barn to the top of the creamery, where the milk was sterilized and pasteurized before being sold to a local dairy and to employees on the estate. Sold as “Winterthur Special Holstein Milk” in bottles carrying the motto “Milk for Better Babies from Winterthur Farms,” the milk was celebrated throughout the local area for its high quality.
The Winterthur dairy maintained strict standards of cleanliness, so it could sell unpasteurized milk. Advertising emphasized the purity of the milk, “produced by cows free from tuberculosis” and “bottled daily at the farm within 30 minutes from the time it was drawn from cows.” Pure, unpasteurized milk, which is easier to digest than pasteurized milk, was promoted as an important factor in the development of healthy children.
Prior to 1929, the cows at Winterthur were milked four times a day. Following that year’s fire, the schedule was changed to twice-a-day milking to save money and to more closely emulate the conditions of ordinary farmers. The herd continued to produce at the same high levels.
Following H. F. du Pont’s death in 1969, and per his instructions, the Winterthur herd was sold at auction, ending a memorable chapter in Winterthur’s history.