Late 19th or Early 20th Century Vermont Farm Machine Company "First Prize Dog Power" Treadmill

Patenting their designs for this dog treadmill, or "dog power," the Vermont Farm Machine Company manufactured this treadmill in Bellows Falls, Vermont, probably near the end of the nineteenth century or beginning of the twentieth century.  Although this treadmill does not have a date painted on it, other examples of Vermont Machine Company First Prize Dog Powers have a patent date of 1884.

In a similar way to the neighboring horse treadmill on display, farmers and their wives used a dog treadmill like this to power various machines in and around the house.  The farmer or his wife would attach a belt to the belt wheel on the side of the treadmill and to the belt wheel on the side of another machine, for example, a washing machine.  In Stuhr Museum’s display, the dog treadmill is attached to a Voss Platform Washer.  The dog would walk to keep its position on the treadmill, causing a series of gears inside and the wheel on the outside of the treadmill to spin. The spinning wheel moved the belt which, in turn, spun a wheel on the outside of the washing machine.  The wheel on the washing machine moved gears inside the machine which then turned other parts, agitating or stirring the clothes around in the water inside the machine’s tub.  By using a dog treadmill to power a washing machine, butter churn, cream separator, or other machine, the farmer and his wife had more time to do other things.  By the 1920s, with the growing use of gasoline tractors and electric motors, animal powered treadmills declined in popularity on the farm. 

The Vermont Farm Machine Company which made this treadmill was founded in July 1868 as the Hartford Sorghum Machine Company in the second story of the Bellows Falls’ livery stable.¹  According to Lyman Hayes, in his 1907 History of the Town of Rockingham, Vermont, the company was initially established to make the Cook’s Sugar Evaporator, a nationally popular item used in New England to turn maple sap into syrup.  Not long after its establishment, however, the company began to make horse-rakes and to sell mowing-machines, harrows, and cultivators.

In February 1873, the company was incorporated as the Vermont Farm Machine Company; and, four years later, began to manufacture the Cooley Creamer.  With the success of the Cooley, the company turned away from making rakes and focused its attention on dairy equipment.  By 1892, according to Seeger and Guernsey's Cyclopaedia of the Manufactures and Products of the United States, the Vermont Farm Machine Company made cider and fruit evaporators, butter carriers, butter extractors, butter moulds, butter printers, butter workers, butter and cheese triers, cheese hoops, cheese presses, cheese vats, barrel churns, box churns, swing churns, cooling vats, cream separators, cream vats, creameries, dairy tanks, and milk coolers.²  Of these items, the company became known worldwide for its Davis Swing Churn and U.S. Cream Separator, two machines which contributed to the company’s rapid growth from the 1880s to the early 1900s.  According to Hayes, the company began with five employees in 1868.  By 1877, there were twelve.  In 1907, when Hayes’ book was finished, there were 720.  For an additional $15 fee, the company would include with some of these machines a dog treadmill like the one here at Stuhr Museum to help provide power.  In addition to dog powers, the company also made sheep, goat, and burro powers.

An ad for a Vermont Farm Machine Company
Sheep Power running one of their most popular
machines, a U.S. Cream Separator, from the
April 16, 1898 edition of The Churchman.

Notes

¹ Lyman Simpson Hayes, History of the Town of Rockingham, Vermont: Including the Villages of Bellows Falls, Saxtons River, Rockingham, Cambridgeport and Bartonsville, 1753-1907, with Family Genealogies (Bellows Falls, VT: The Town, 1907), pp. 422-424. The book was printed in Lynn, Massachusetts by Frank S. Whitten, a man who learned some of the printing trade while working for the Bellows Falls newspaper.

² Seeger and Guernsey's Cyclopaedia of the Manufactures and Products of the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: The Seeger and Guernsey Co., 1892).  In the 1899 edition of Seeger and Guernsey’s Cyclopaedia (New York: The United States Industrial Publishing Company, 1899), the list of Vermont Farm Machine Company products also included cream testers, hoisting cranks, milk aerators, milk cans, milk testing machines, sap evaporators, and sugar evaporators.  It also listed horse power, dog power, and sheep and goat power for the company’s products. The 1910 edition of Implement Blue Book: The Standard Implement and Vehicle Directory of the United States (St. Louis: Midland Publishing Company, 1910) states that the Vermont Farm Machine Company produced dog, goat, and burro powers; Davis Swing churns, Vermont Box churns, U.S. hand and power cream separators, C. V. boilers, Williams maple syrup and sorghum evaporators, and Eureka feed cookers.