SEPTEMBER 6, 1899: Is Your Cow Really Happy?

Elbridge Amos Stuart was a man who knew his cows. He learned cows on his father’s farm in North Carolina and carried that knowledge into his own adult enterprises. Eventually he went west, young man, finding his way to the state of Washington where on September 6, 1899, he founded a company that was all about cows and a new process that evaporated the milk from those cows and canning it, thus creating a sanitary milk product that required no refrigeration.

The business grew, and he gave it a new identity, the Carnation Evaporated Milk Company (the name taken from a box of cigars he had seen in a tobacco shop window).  Then in 1907 he introduced the promotional slogan that would from then on be the company’s mantra: “Carnation, the milk from contented cows.”

And were those cows contented. Stuart’s conviction that the best milk came from cows that were healthy, wealthy and wise was the company’s guiding principle. And Stuart didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. Those happy cows were also the most productive. Carnation cows led world milk production for over 30 years. One really contented cow, Segis Pietertje Prospect (Possum Sweetheart to friends), delivered a record 37,381 pints during one year. A statue in Tolt, Washington (now Carnation, Washington) commemorated this achievement.

That’s Some Cow

Possum Sweetheart, a Holstein, achieved her record output in 1920. She was born in 1913 at the Carnation Milk Farms, sired by a bull known as Old Buckshot. The first time her milker (contented cows evidently have personal milkers) milked her, she produced twice as much milk as any of the other less contented cows. And she did it again and again, producing her own weight in milk every three weeks.

Her fame spread. Officials from agricultural colleges throughout the world came to see her. Reporters and photographers reported and photographed. Celebrities and politicians dropped by.

Possum Sweetheart died at the age of 12, five years after her record output. Her offspring were sold to breeders throughout the world, and many of her heifers’ offspring became productive Carnation cows themselves.

Then There’s Elsie

What Contented Cows Listen To

Known throughout his career as the Texas Troubadour, Ernest Tubb was a pioneer of country music who helped to popularize the honky tonk style with his major 1941 hit “Walking the Floor Over You.” His career went on to span another four decades. He died on September 6, 1984.