Dry Hands, Diaper Rash, Foot Odor: Bag Balm Soothes More Than Udders

LYNDONVILLE, Vt. - The instructions on the side of the green tin are clear: Apply the Bag Balm thoroughly after each milking.

The instructions have hardly changed in 100 years, but folks who swear by Bag Balm don't follow the directions, and they don't use it on cows.

Instead they rub the ointment on dry hands, burns and abrasions. Testimonials claim it eases everything from diaper rash and foot odor to bicycle chafe, radiation burns and needle pricks in quilters' fingertips.

"I just knew that if I fell off my bike I needed Bag Balm," said Rob Ide, a state senator from Caledonia County. His family owns E.T. and H.K. Ide, a feed company that's older than Bag Balm. His father and grandfather always stocked the product.

But the ointment had the biggest impact on the Ide household. "It was always in my parents' medicine cabinet," he said. "We used it on everything."

Only when he was old enough to read did he discover Bag Balm was intended for cows' udders.

That finding, and Bag Balm's lack of FDA approval, hasn't stopped Ide - though it caused one of the worst fights in Ide's marriage. When he applied the ointment to his screaming infant's diaper rash, his wife, a registered nurse, erupted: It wasn't FDA-approved.

But the rash healed, Ide said, and the crying stopped.

Bag Balm still soothes the chafed teats of dairy cows.

Alan Parent owns the May Store in Lyndonville, where tins of Bag Balm now sit among the maple syrup. He remembers as a kid slathering the balm on the cows milking at the family farm in East Berkshire. They used it mostly in spring, when it was damp, and it worked.

Little has changed in the formula of petroleum, lanolin and antiseptic that John Norris bought from a pharmacist in 1899. Even the green tins and graphics resemble the original Bag Balm containers.

Norris' 85-year-old son, John, wholesales Bag Balm through Dairy Association, his company in Lyndonville with eight employees. He checks on orders every morning during the seven months he spends in Florida. During summers, he works from an office in the company's administrative center.

Orders are filled at a plant down the road less than an eighth of a mile away. Golden Petro - the main ingredient - is shoveled from a 50-gallon drum into a large vat. Then honey-like lanolin imported from England is heaved from another drum. The mixture is heated to 95 degrees. Filled by machine on a small production line, the 10-ounce tins are capped by hand.

Cash orders are filled immediately - a carton to a man in San Antonio, Texas; a larger order to an animal hospital in Staten Island, N.Y., and a first shipment to Clinicalcare Skin Solution in Tulsa, Okla.

Ads in a few veterinary magazines and regional publications keep sales steady. "Bag Balm hit the big time" when Charles Kuralt visited the small plant in 1984, says Ron Bean, the production manager.