HOW COWS SHOULD BE MILKED.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 18, 16 October 1907, Page 2

HOW COWS SHOULD BE MILKED.

A GOSPEL OP CLEANLINESS. THE MUNICIPAL METHOD. A loading authority has lately been urging that all milking should be done by females/ and that milking by men should bo strictly forbidden. His reason is that a-woman's clothes are washed oftener than a man's, and .that a man's clothes usually reek with germs, which drop into the milk in a multitudinous, -though' invisible, shower, yHe is probably thinking of that familiar greenish coat that one used to seo often on farms—sometimes used us a scarecrow.':, - Dirt is-said to massacre 60,000 babies in England annually, and there is room for improvement even in bright' clean: New Zealand.' In Italy it is common to see a dairy ccw driven along the street, and stopping at the doors of houses while the evening's milk is milked .direct into the housekeeper's jug. This at all events avoids some of .the sources of contamination, and it certainly dodges the -water pump. . "To w«tch the milking of: cows' (in. England)' I ,(says.."Pearson's Magazine!') "is to watch a'process of unscientific inoculation of. > pure (or almost pure), medium with uniknown quantities of unspecified germs. Whoever knows,the meaning of aseptic surgerymust feel his blood run cold when he watches, 1 ' oven itt imagination, the thousand chances of ■germ inoculation. From cow to cow the ,milker goes, taking with her (or. him) the stale epithelium of the last cow, tho particles of dirt caught' from the,', floor, the liairs, the dust, and the germs that adhero to them.. Everywhere, throughout the whole process of milking, the perishablo, • superbly nutrient liquid receives • its repeated sowings of germinal and non-germinal dirt. In an hour or two its population of triumphant lives is a thing imagination boggles'at. • And this in good dairies I. What must it be where, cows are never groomed, where hands , are only by accident. washed, where heads are , only occasionally cloaned, where spittings (tobacco or other) are: not infrequent, where the milker may bo a chance-comer ' from some filthy slum —where, in a word, the various dirts of the civilised. human are at every -hand reinforced by the inevitable dirts of the domesticated .cow." ' j , How Cows are Milked in. America. "How they do these things in the City of Rochester, New " York, . U.S.A.—where the municipality began to supply milk on the best , principles in 1899 —is a good, object-lesson: A central station at whic]i the milk, is prepared'' is organised'eaoh season on a farm outside the city, where a trained nurse and assistants have full control of the cows, • utensils, bottles, etc., and where .all of tho milk work is earned on in a' portable milk laboratory. Everything coming in contact with the milk is' thoroughly sterilised in steam sterilisers. Tho milk itself is not subject to any pasteurising or sterilising process. At the milk station on the farm the milk is taken . from clean, well-fed, tested cattle into, sterile cans, which are carried to the barn in sterile , cheesecloth bags. Just before milking, the cows' udders are washed. A sterilised cheesecloth fly-cover is placed'over 1 the cow, the first portion of tho milk being rejected. So soon as tho cans are filled' they are imme- , diately covered by a layer of cheesecloth held in position by a rubber band; .The cans of milk thus-covered are'immediately taken from the barn, into the laboratory! about two hundred yards away, where the ijiilk is properly diluted, swoetencd, and turned off into sterile nursing bottles. The bottles are corked li-ith sterile rubber corks, placed in racks, covered with'cracked ice, andl immediately transferred to the city for use,_ Of the cleanliness of milk prepared in this way, forty-three daily •' samples wero found to average not more than 14,000 bacteria per cubic centimetre, while the" city milk-for . the same period approximated 235,000 bacteria per cubic centimetre'."-'