MILK PRODUCTS
Every milk producer should make some study of the principal products
that are made from milk, for such information may help to market it to
a better advantage.
=Butter.= The law requires that butter contain 80% butter-fat and that
it shall contain less than 16% moisture. In 100 pounds of creamery
butter there is usually about 3 pounds of salt, 1 pound of casein and
between 15 and 16 pounds of water.
Figuring that butter contains 80% fat for the minimum which allows for
the maximum amount of water, the following amount may be obtained from
100 pounds of milk:
100 lbs. of 3% milk will produce 3³⁄₄ lbs. of butter.
100 lbs. of 4% milk will produce 5 lbs. of butter.
100 lbs. of 5% milk will produce 6¹⁄₄ lbs. of butter.
=Cheese.= It usually takes about 10 pounds of 4% milk to make 1 pound
of cheddar cheese, which is the common cheese usually sold at the
stores. This cheese will test out about 36.8% fat, 25.5% protein, 6%
sugar, ash, etc., and 31.7% water.
=Cottage Cheese.= Cottage cheese is usually made from skim milk. 100
pounds of average skim milk will make from 12 to 15 pounds of cottage
cheese, such as is usually sold on the city market. Where it is creamed
the cream is put in after the cheese is made.
=Cream.= 100 pounds of 4% milk will produce: 20 pounds of 20% cream
and 80 pounds of skim remaining, 13¹⁄₃ pounds of 30% cream and 86²⁄₃
lbs. of skim remaining, or 10 pounds of 40% cream and 90 pounds of skim
remaining.
The average cream sold tests about 30% butter-fat, so on the average
the farmer has left about 86 pounds or a ten-gallon can of skim milk
for every 100 pounds of 4% milk.
=Skim Milk.= The value of skim milk on the farm as feed is an important
one for the farmer. The price of whole milk in the city is not always
high enough so that it pays the farmer to sell his skim rather than to
use it for feeding. During the flush season in the spring when milk
dealers are all burdened with a surplus of milk, it would be a great
advantage if more farmers would separate and feed the skim milk to
hogs. I will endeavor to give here as accurately as possible what real
information I can gather from Experiment Station reports concerning the
feeding value of skim milk. At the outset it might be well to state
that on this question I have never known any two agricultural experts
to agree and experiments need to be carefully analyzed before they
yield true information.
I can prove to you from experiments published in Henry & Morrison’s
“Feeds and Feeding” that skim milk is worth only $.08 a hundred pounds
when corn meal is worth $1.00 a hundred, and I can prove that skim milk
is worth $.31 a hundred pounds when corn meal is worth $1.00 a hundred.
In fact when an experimenter undertakes to prove a thing he has very
easy sailing if he can line up conditions to suit the proposition he
intends to prove. The trouble with most experiments on this subject
has been that they are apparently planned to be used as arguments for
the purpose of increasing the feeding of skim milk and they do not
undertake to solve the real question involved.
Every one knows that corn alone is too unbalanced a ration to feed to
hogs profitably. Where it is endeavored to show that skim milk has a
very high value, one bunch of hogs is fed corn alone, and to compare
with it another bunch is fed corn and a small amount of skim milk. Let
those who are satisfied with the information that can be obtained by
such an experiment use it and I will have no dispute with them. But for
most of us the question is whether we should feed alfalfa to the cow
and the cow’s milk to the pig or let the pig eat his own alfalfa. A
hog’s ration may be balanced with alfalfa hay or with alfalfa or rape
pasture. The question is whether milk and corn makes as cheap a gain
as alfalfa and corn. It is very difficult to find experiments that
answer this question and it is the most practical one in the world. If
it is good sense to use the cost of producing pork on dry corn alone
as the basis of getting at the value of milk, it is also good sense to
use skim milk alone as the basis of figuring the value of grain. In an
experiment published by Henry & Morrison on page 597, where little pigs
weighing only twenty-five pounds were used and which are capable of
making cheaper gains on milk than older hogs because they have smaller
bodies to maintain, it took 2,739 pounds of skim milk to make one
hundred pounds of gain. But where 233 pounds of grain were fed with
935 pounds of skim milk there was also a gain of one hundred pounds.
Figuring now as they do who would set the value of milk by the cost
of feeding dry grain, we will use skim milk as a basis of figuring.
If skim milk is worth $.30 a hundred, corn is worth $2.32 a hundred.
This is the same line of reasoning as is used when in an experiment
reported on page 598, if corn is worth $.01 a pound we find that skim
milk is worth $.30 a hundred. All they prove is that a hog must have
something besides corn or milk. Corn is the cheapest hog feed but it is
too unbalanced a diet to get the best results when fed alone. A small
amount of skim milk or something else will balance the diet. According
to reports published by Henry & Morrison on page 598 it will be noticed
that 585 pounds of skim milk reduced the amount of grain required to
produce 100 lb. growth by 179 pounds. If corn is worth $.01 a pound and
we figure on that basis, skim milk is worth $.31 a hundred pounds. But
notice what happens when the amount of skim milk is increased beyond
what is needed to supply the elements which corn lacks. When the amount
of skim milk is increased by 463 pounds more, the amount of corn meal
eaten was only reduced by 56 pounds, so that for the first 585 pounds
the farmer was getting $.31 but for the next 463 pounds he was getting
only $.12 a hundred pounds, and when the skim milk was again increased
by 849 pounds the amount of corn meal required was only reduced 71
pounds and this figures down the last batch of skim to only about $.08
per hundred pounds. These experiments prove that we must keep somewhere
near a balanced ration but do not prove anything regarding a definite
value of skim as a feed.
What your skim milk is worth on the farm depends altogether on how
much it is needed to balance the diet in hog feeding operations. It is
of much more value for little pigs than for larger hogs that are more
capable of digesting grasses. Professor Henry says, “Pigs fed skim
milk and grain gained nothing from pasture. Grazing stimulates the
appetites of pigs getting grain but no milk and they eat more grain
and make larger and more economical gains.” So we see that pigs will
pass up pasture for milk and that when milk is fed to pigs on pasture
it replaces the use of pasture so that it does not do much good to
pasture hogs that are fed milk. Experiments reported on page 614 show
that pigs on alfalfa pasture require 344 pounds of grain to gain one
hundred pounds and that on rape pasture only 340 pounds are required.
Different experiments always vary slightly as to the amount of grain
required to make a certain growth. But taking the most advantageous
ration that we can prepare with milk and corn as shown by these
experiments, we may conclude that something like 300 pounds of grain
and 500 pounds of milk will make one hundred pounds of growth on one
hundred pound hogs, and that about 350 pounds of grain fed to hogs on
pasture will make the same amount of growth. Let each farmer figure out
what pasture and grain cost him and he can get approximately the real
value of skim milk. For large hogs milk will be worth less than here
shown. For smaller hogs it will be worth more.
It may be interesting to know the cost per pound of skim milk solids
figured at different prices, but the chemical analysis we are not
considering. One hundred pounds of milk usually contains about 9.25
pounds of solids. If 100 pounds of skim milk is worth $.20, one pound
of dry matter would be worth $.0216 and a ton would be worth $43.20. At
$.40 a hundred, one pound of dry matter would be worth $.0432 and a ton
would be worth $86.40. At $.50 a hundred, one pound of dry matter would
cost $.0540 and one ton cost $108.00.
=Whey.= The average composition of whey is about as follows: water
93.12%, and total solids 6.88%. Of the total solids there are about
.27% fat, .81% nitrogenous substances and 5.80% sugar, ash, etc. For
pigs whey has a feeding value about half that of skim milk.