THE DAIRY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 674, 30 January 1885, Page 11

THE DAIRY.

ENRICHMENT OF SKIM-MILK FOR CHEESE-MAKING. The Gloucester Journal thus referred to an.-, apparatus for this purpose, received from Messrs Burrell and Whitman of New York. Tii6 object of the butter maker is to extract the butter fat from milk. This fat, when worked up into butter, may be sold at prices varying from Is to 2s per lb., according to the quality of the article and the state of the market. For the residue (skim milk) hitherto only two applications have been found, viz., making akim-miik cheeses and feeding pigs. A pure skim-milk cheese is so hard, innutritions, and indigestible that it is scarcely saleable at any price, and the cheese-maker is obliged, therefore, to leave some fat la his cheese in order to produce an article that the public will buy. To do this he has, obviously, to sacrifice butter fat which wili bring him, say, 14-d per lb,, to make cheese, which does not, on an average, fetch more than 7d per lb. Now the Americans, seeing this difficulty, have reasoned within themselves thus : beef fat is so identical in composition and appearance with butter fat that it is scarcely possible, when the two are melted, to distinguish the one from the other. But beef fat, though quite as nutritious and as eatable as butter fat. is only worth in the market about.half as much as butter. Why should the cheesemaker not replace by means of beef fat in the cheese tho butter fat which he has taken out of the milk ? To this question there is, 60 far as we can see, only one answer, and that is, if the cheese-maker by using beef fat can make a cheese which is practically as good for nutritive purposes as whole-milk cheese, and which satisfies the palate of the customer as well, there can be no reasonable objection to liia doing so. It is clearly to his advantage to do so, because it provides him with a means of utilising his skim milk in a way which practically makes that article as valuable for cheese-making as whole milk. And it is certain that the British public are largely consuming cheeses imported from America made in this way. It becomes, therefore, a matter of considerable practical importance to the British dairy-farmer whether he will quietly allow the foreigner to drive him altogether out of the cheese market by the practice of this ingenious device, or whether be will meet him with his own weapons, and thus at the same time turn the tables upon him, and increase materially his own resources.

WATER FOR STOCK. The amount of water drunk by stock when fed on different rations is a subject which has not received much attention by feeders. Professor Sanborn, in a summary of his eight years’ experiments in the United States, touches upon this point as follows : Steers properly housed and ordinarily fed, drink about three pounds of water for every pound of organic matter of food eaten. This amount varies with the temperature of air, and may be less in cold weather or poor barns, and more under reverse conditions. This amount ig one pound, or 25 per cent less than found by German investigators, and perhaps partly accounts for the followiug facts showing that food is more efficacious here than shown, or affirmed to be in Germany. The amount of water drunk varies with the food ; in absolute amount, less with grain and coarse food rations, but in per cent greater. The kind of combination of food affects the amount drunk. With roots, the amount is large. With a grain ratioD, the amount taken is less than on hay alone. On a wholly grain ration the amount taken is at its minimum. The direction in which the water drunk is eliminated from the system depends upon the character of the food. The proportion thrown off as urine is increased with the increase of

the grain ration. The proportion thrown off from tire skin and lungs as vapour increase with an increase of the coarse food of the ration. These facta have, at least, the following important bearings, to wit : certain rations increase tho water drunk to be warmed to blood heat ; second, the} 7 increase the amount to be vaporised from skin and lungs ; important because every pound of water thu3 vaporised is said to require two and a half ounces of starch, or its equivalent.