ERRORS IN FARM DAIRYING-THEIR REMEDY.

BY F. C. CURTIS, ROCKY RUN.

The question given me for discussion would seem to embrace all branches of dairying, when, in fact, I claim knowledge only in one branch of dairying, and that is butter making.

There are several prominent errors in making butter which are quite common, easily pointed out, and in the main easily remedied. The greatest obstacle in the way of reform is to get the necessary instruction before those who commit the errors; to get their attention, win their confidence, by showing them that the remedy is less laborious, and the grand result a larger and better product, consequently a much better price is obtained for the surplus than is possible under the old erroneous method of butter making.

The errors of butter making are:

1st. Uncleanliness.

2d. Too much acid in the cream.

3d. Caseine or buttermilk in a decomposed state.

4th. Too much friction in churning and working the butter. 5th. Bad salt and too much of it.

Foul milking stables, impure water, odors from various sources, known and unknown, are errors vital in their consequences, and not generally thought of as of any importance.

Good sweet milk contains one-fourth more sugar than it does of butter; this sugar turns to acid, and if this acid is too much developed before churning, the coveted aroma of good butter is lost.

The first question requiring our attention is milk, from which to make the butter; it is hardly necessary to say that it must be good. That good milk can be had only from cows that are well fed and comfortably provided for in stables in inclement weather. For the present, I propose to take the cows as we have them, and improve their quality, or the quality of their product, by

proper feed and care, leaving the question of a better quality of cows undiscussed in this paper.

I hold that the cows we have are better than we give them credit for; that proper feed and care will greatly improve their quality, and the quantity and quality of their product. To allow a cow to fail in flesh while making butter is error No. 1, and a very grievous one; an error that will be quickly detected by the expert when the butter product is placed upon the market. The better the cow, the more danger of this error, for the reason that her nature works to milk forming, and if her system is not provided with proper nutriment, the result is, first her fat and then her muscle or lean meat is gradually transformed into milk, and the butter from such milk will be deficient in flavor, aroma, texture and color, whatever the season of the year, or however well made. I would not give arbitrary rules how the cow should be kept, what the particular feed or form of shelter should be, simply that it should be good and sufficient, such as our farms produce in abundance, and that almost any one can command with proper diligence and effort.

Having obtained the milk, our next effort is to extract the cream, and right here is where our serious and seemingly insur mountable obstacles appear. There are numerous ways or systems of extracting the cream from milk. Each system has its particular requirements, the main feature of which is temperature, and that particular degree of temperature called for must be regular to produce the best results. The system mainly known and used by farm dairies is the shallow, open setting; usually tin pans holding six and ten quarts each. Where a regular temperature of 62° and a pure atmosphere can be commanded for this system, as much and as good butter can probably be made as by any other system; but our climate hardly furnishes that temperature even for one setting of milk, which is from thirty-six to forty-eight hours duration to complete the rising of the cream. There is not only this difficulty of temperature, but the other requirement of a pure atmosphere can hardly be commanded by the ordinary farm dairy. There is probably no one article or thing so susceptible to take up or absorb cooking or other odors as milk and cream, when exposed to their influence.

If we remove to the cellar, we may, by taking pains, command sixty-two degrees of temperature for a large portion of the year, but for quite a length of time in the hot season the temperature will be too warm, and the milk exposed to ozone in the atmosphere during thunder storms, which prematurely sours the milk, causing loss in quantity and quality of cream. Not only this, but few cellars can be properly cleansed of the taint of stored vegetables, which is very likely to produce a taint in the flavor of the butter. I think I am safe in stating that nine-tenths of the dairy butter made in this state is made under these disadvantages; and though the overtasked women who have the care of this great industry, do their best to remedy the errors inci. dental to this system of separating the cream from the milk, still the result is, our markets are glutted with poor, low priced butter, much of which is sold for eight or ten cents per pound, and some even less, while the milk from which it it was made was suscep tible of having been made into a butter now selling for thirty to thirty-three cents per pound. There are some other errors incidental to this system that I shall pass over for the present, but may revert to them hereafter.

The genius of invention of the present day seems turned towards other systems of raising cream, commonly termed "deep settings," and their number seems to be legion- prominent among which is the Cooley system, which is a tin vessel about eight inches in diameter and about twenty inches deep, filled with milk warm from the cow, covered in a peculiar manner, and entirely submerged in water cooled with ice to about forty degrees temperature. This raises all cream between milkings. This system is highly spoken of by Hons. Hiram Smith and A. A. Boyce, who have used it for over a year past.

There is the vacuum system, now so nearly perfected by the Portage Cream Extractor Company, that seems little doubt that in many respects it will have superior points of excellence. It is claimed that it will take from milk animal odors, and flavors caused by cows feeding upon rutabagas and other objectionable forage. All the deep settings are covered, and shuts out atmospheric influences. I verily believe that milk, cream and butter

sustain more injury by exposure to the atmosphere than by any other one error.

I have tried a great variety of experiments with different kinds of vessels for raising cream, and find that a tin pail, made from two sheets of tin 14 by 21, for the body of the pail, making a pail about nine inches in diameter by twenty-one deep, and the cover to be made the same as a tin pail, only the flange of the same to be about two inches wide, and to have a small tube hole in the center. This, as completed and filled with milk-warm milk from the cow-the cover put on, the flange going well into the milk, the tube hole then corked or plugged up, and set in water from 40° to 45°, raises all the cream in from six to eight hours, and that, too, free from all odors, and free from the effect of oxygen in the atmosphere, prevalent during thunder storms. The cream will be

found sweet, and can be easily removed with a teacup or a small dipper, and kept until a sufficient quantity of cream is collected for a churning. At each addition of cream, the cream should be stirred together to produce a uniform degree of acidity, and should be churned in its first or sugar acid. If skimmed sweet upon this plan, and then standing in an atmosphere of 60°, it will be ripe for churning in thirty-six to forty-eight hours.

Those who undertake to use this method of raising cream, or any similar method, must bear in mind that they are using a different method or system from the shallow setting; that it requires a colder temperature -40 to 45 degrees - and that water, in which to set the vessels containing the milk, is better than air. I want to make this proposition plain, for I consider it very important, not only to describe how to do it just right, but how far a digression may be allowed, and as far as possible explain why and how this result is reached.

Milk holds heat longer than water; heat expands milk, and cold contracts it. Now we will fill such a pail as above described with milk warm from the cow, which will be nearly 98 degrees, or blood heat. We find it weighs about 38 pounds; will place it in iced water, at 40 degrees, and keep the water as near as practicable to that temperature for eight hours, when the cream will be found all risen, and the milk and cream of the temperature of

the water it is standing in, and we will find the milk and cream decreased in volume one-half pint. It seems to me very plain that when we set the pail into the iced water, that the milk near the cold water cooled first, and settled to the bottom; that the warm inner portion rose to the top, causing an upward current in the center, and a downward one on the outer portion of the milk; that with the upward current went the cream, and remained at the top.

I have another theory: that the creamy globules retain heat longer than the watery part of the milk; hence, as cooling takes place, the cold, watery portion shrinks and becomes heavier, while the cream retains its volume and buoys to the top. Be this as it may, such is the result. I have stated that the best results are obtained by this system at a temperature of forty to forty-five degrees, which requires ice. Ice is a very important factor in the manufacture of butter under any system; is very cheaply obtained and preserved for summer use, but when it is not to be commanded, the system I have described will admit of a little warmer temperature. Well and spring water is usually fortynine degrees, and when open wells are at a reasonable depth, these pails can be lowered into the water and nearly as good results obtained. However, when this practice is followed, four or five inch screw covers should be used in place of the covers previously described. It matters not what vessel contains the water, or where placed; so long as the water does not get warmer than fifty degrees, a fair result will be obtained; but when the vessel containing the water is small in proportion to the quantity of milk placed in it, the water will be found to warm up quickly unless it is often changed, and the result will be spoiled milk in a very short time. Then will come the complaint, "I told you that it would never do to shut up the animal odors in the milk."

I hold that good milk has nothing in it objectionable that it is necessary to get out- that animal heat is not essentially different from other heat, and that that degree of heat is just the temperature desirable to confine, by covering up as described, and placing it in water; is just the mechanical and chemical combination required to produce the result I have claimed. From the various experi