PRODUCTION OF MILK.
The requisites of good milk have been so frequently and fully discussed,
that we need not more than briefly advert to them now. The importance of
good milk, for either cheese or butter, will be conceded, and therefore
the question need not be argued.
The first requisites of good milk are good cows. But these will
disappoint their owners if they have not good keep. Plenty of good clean
hay and pure water, with warm quarters, are indispensable. The
old-fashioned method of allowing cows, or other cattle, to weather all
kinds of storms, with a snow-bank for a bed at night, we believe is
pretty effectually done away with. It has been found that it does not
pay. It is not yet quite so universally admitted that generous feeding
is equally advantageous, nor that a warm stable is as much an advance on
an open, cold one, where the cows stand and shiver throughout the
twenty-four hours, as a common shelter is an improvement on no shelter.
Yet, a warm stable, which may be had for a small expense, is decided
economy, in the saving of food, as well as a comfort to the cows; and
generous feeding will be found a profitable investment, both by the
increased flow of milk and by its increased richness. A poorly-kept cow
will give less milk than a well-kept one, and its poorer quality will be
more manifest than the diminution in quantity. When turned out to grass,
if the feed should prove good, it will take the cow weeks to build up
her system and get in the condition she should have been in at the
start; and though the quantity and quality of her milk will improve,
she will reach the time when the mess naturally begins to shrink before
she will have thoroughly recuperated. After this, the richness of the
milk will probably be satisfactory. But in case the season should open
dry and cold, so that the grass starts slowly, and is then followed by
the hot dry weather of July and August, as is not unfrequently the case,
a cow that starts "spring poor" will scarcely get in good condition
before the grass is nipped by the fall frosts and it becomes necessary
to begin to fodder.
There is a marked difference in the quality of the messes of milk
delivered at a cheese-factory. The use of the lactometer and
cream-gauges will show this. It will be an interesting experiment, for
cheese-makers who never tried it, to test in this way the quality of the
milk delivered by the different patrons, and then ascertain the style in
which each keeps his cows, the character of the pastures of each, the
kind of water which the pastures afford--whether brook, river, swamp or
spring--and to note any other facts and conditions which may be apparent
or may suggest themselves. It will be found, we think, that bad
wintering and poor pastures have as much or more to do than anything
else with the production of poor milk. No breed of cows nor selection of
a dairy can wholly counteract these evils. The yield of milk will
undoubtedly be greater and better with some cows than with others; and
so with naturally good cows, good wintering and pasturing will show
quite as marked improvements.
We have in our mind an instance where, at the opening of a
cheese-factory, only a few of the farmers, having the largest dairies,
delivered milk. They were all men who fed their cows well during the
winter, and gave them meal before and after coming in. The result was
an astonishingly large yield of cheese from milk at that season of the
year. But as the messes increased, and milk from dairies poorly-kept
came in, the yield of cheese in proportion to the number of pounds of
milk steadily diminished. The lactometer and cream-gauges showed that
the poorest milk came from the poorest-kept cows.
The forepart of the season proved a cold and wet one, which made the
grass more juicy and less nutritious. This, with the accidental or
intentional watering which the milk got from the rain falling in the
cans, either at home or on the road, was also believed to decrease the
yield of cheese. It appeared that milk coming long distances through the
rain, other things being equal, showed more water than that brought
short distances. Manifestly, some sort of shelter to the cans should be
devised, to be used both at home and on the road, during rainy
weather--and the same for keeping off the rays of the sun, in fair
weather, is equally desirable.
All through the season, in the instance referred to, there was a marked
difference in the quality of the milk of the well-kept and of the
poorly-kept dairies. Swampy pastures also seemed to impoverish the milk.
Those pastures that were dry, with pure water accessible, appeared to
produce the richest milk. While the milk of the best dairies, on being
tested, would indicate a yield of a pound of cheese to eight or nine
pounds of milk, the milk of others would not yield a pound of cheese to
less than eleven or twelve pounds of milk. The average number of pounds
of milk for a pound of cheese, during the season, was about 9.9.
In the foregoing, will be seen a manifest objection to the factory
system, as at present conducted. The quality of the milk delivered is
nowhere taken into consideration. The man who has a well-selected dairy,
keeps it well, and delivers milk that will turn out, for the season, a
hundred pounds of cheese for every nine hundred pounds of milk, gets no
more returns for a given number of pounds of milk than the man who
delivers milk so poor that twelve hundred pounds of it will not make
more than a hundred pounds of cheese, or the same as the former's nine
hundred pounds. There is a difference of about twenty-five per cent, in
the quality of the milk turned out by the good and the poor dairies,
one-half of which the owner of the former loses, and the other half of
which the owner of the latter gains, by getting his milk made up at the
factory. Some means should be devised for remedying this piece of
injustice, if the better class of dairies is to be retained by the
factories.