Forrest Paul Cottrell
Forrest, born 17 Jul 1907, was the third child of Carl C. and Myrtle I. Cottrell.
Forrest married Margaret Summerton of Oxford, WI in 1930.
Forrest and Margaret had four children.
|
|
Forrest met his wife Margaret Summerton when Margaret and her sister Florence were selling, door-to-door, religious books in the Fountain Valley area in the summer of 1930. Forrest's parents provided the sisters room and board. Forrest was also staying with his folks and working on a nearby farm. Forrest and Margaret became engaged. Later, after that summer, Margaret and Florence were working for Doctor Linsey in Madison. On one of Forrest's courtship trips to Madison he took his cousin Barnabas (Barney), son of Gaius (Gay) Cottrell, with him and that started a courtship between Barney and Florence. Forrest and Margaret were married 17 Nov 1930 and Barney and Florence were married 3 Jun 1931. Forrest died in 1981 and Margaret died in 2001.
You rarely see milk cows with horns. That is because farmers don't like their milk cows getting injured by another cow's horns and the farmer doesn't like getting jabbed by a horn so the horns are cut off before they get too long. The cows are not at all fond of this procedure and it is very hard to hold them still while their horns are removed.
Forrest's father, Carl, started a dehorning business, probably in the 1920's. He designed a portable stanchion that could be bolted to a farmer's barn door. Dehorning is done in the winter and he would load the stanchion on a sleigh and use a team of horses to go from farm to farm dehorning cattle. Carl never owned or drove a car or truck.
The stanchion worked pretty well but the cows could still move around a lot which sometimes made it difficult to saw the horns off a cow. To get around this problem Carl designed and built a dehorning rig that held the whole cow firmly so its horns could be cut off with relative ease. The dehorning rig neatly folded so it could be hauled from farm to farm.
Forrest and his brother Sterling helped their father Carl dehorn cattle and took over the dehorning business around 1930 when Carl was in his mid-sixties.
Forrest bought a pickup truck to haul the dehorning rig and this allowed Forrest and Sterling to greatly expand the Cottrell dehorning business.
The state grades milk produced by farmers. Grade A milk can be sold to bottled milk and brings the highest price. To sell Grade A milk a farmers barn must meet certain standards which include clean and treated walls and ceilings. One way to accomplish this is to whitewash the milking area of a barn by spraying a mixture of water and lime on the interior of the milking portion of a barn.
Cattle are generally only dehorned in the winter. In the summer Forrest and Sterling whitewashed barns. Forrest continued the dehorning and whitewashing business after Sterling was killed in an airplane crash in 1946.
Forrest's son Floyd continues to operate the whitewashing and dehorning business and still uses the dehorning rig built by Carl Cottrell.
|
 Forrest & Margaret Wedding picture
L-R: Sterling (Forrest's Brother), Forrest, Margaret, & Elnor (Margaret's Sister)
 Sterling & Forrest dehorning
 Cottrell whitewashing rig
 Forrest & Margaret in 1980
|