Cows are milked twice a day. 4 teats per cow, two milkings, means only one cow is required for one day.
As for pay, I don’t see any milkmaids on my local Craigslist, but ranch hand apparently pays housing and whatever tips you can glean from the tourists.
StG
I can’t find any information on milkmaids, but corn detassling,a traditional first job for many rural kids, starts at $9/hr.
Must … not … make … sexist … joke
I think the discrepancy might be more a classist than a sexist thing. Maids milking are cheaper than ladies dancing.
Mmm, baby.
Minimum wage doesn’t apply to many agricultural jobs, which I think includes dairy herd management.
The apple orchard near me hires pickers every year. Most of them pick every year and are pretty good at their job. They are paid according to how much they pick, and they make well over minimum wage. But some first-timers do so poorly that they don’t even come close to minimum wage.
What I want to know is did they multiply out the number of times the gift was repeated? The partridge in the pear tree was given 12 times, one for each of the twelve days. The two turtle doves were given 11 times, for 22 birds in all, and so on.
Priceless!
Reading the article, it appears that they did not, and each gift was only counted once. Which I think is wrong - each verse lists what was given on each day.
The only way you could economize is to give the partridge and the pear tree on the first day, then one partridge per day after that. Because the song doesn’t say it’s the only partridge in the pear tree - just that it is in a pear tree.
Regards,
Shodan
The PNC website I linked to above has the total for that methodology being $170,609. Nearly half of that ($78,750) is the goddamn swans - apparently they run a cool $1875 each.
A related question:
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Christmas described as having 12 days other than in this song. Is this some European thing, or maybe an idea from the past that we no longer use?
It’s the twelve days from the celebration of the Nativity (December 25) to the celebration of the Epiphany (January 6). The Nativity was when Jesus was born. The Epiphany was when people became aware that Jesus was divine.
Wikipedia says the song dates back to 1780. I imagine even a large country estate back then couldn’t really accommodate 42 swans. But then, they ate swans in those days. “Dammit, Alice, swan for dinner again!”
With clever planning, both the swans and the geese could be a profit center, helping to finance the various lords, ladies & maids.
Mute Swans (likely the species that the songwriters had in mind) are an invasive species in the New World, and definitely a problem in some areas. Canada Geese are in many places so numerous as to be a major nuisance. I think you could arrange to collect the number you need and charge a substantial fee for this pest-removal service.
The maids could be a profit center, too: just open up a massage parlor. Who says the eight maids are milking cows?
And Twelve Days of Christmas is still a thing, at least in Catholic churches. It’s one of the five liturgical seasons, along with Advent, Lent, Easter, and Ordinary Time.
Twelfth Night
*Twelfth Night, or What You Will[notes 1] is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–1602 as a Twelfth Night’s entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. *
*Twelfth Night is a festival in some branches of Christianity marking the coming of the Epiphany. Different traditions mark the date of Twelfth Night on either 5 January or 6 January … *
Never mind the cost, think of the recipient:
https://soundcloud.com/brian-sibley/and-yet-another-partridge-in-a
Aren’t there still a few states where it’s illegal to procure a maid for milking purposes at any price at all?
