THE DAIRY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 879, 4 January 1889, Page 19

THE DAIRY.

HOW OETEN TO MILK A COWThe question is asked : ‘How many times should a cow be milked daily ? and what would be the effect of a more or less frequent milking upon the quality and quantity of the milk ?' As a rule with ordinary cows, twice milking suffices, and ia a 3 often as it can be profitably done in conjunction with other farm work. But there are extraordinary cows that ought to be milked three times a day—once every eight hours. This would not only be profitable, but would greatly add to the cow’s comfort. It would also stimulate nature to an iucreased flow of milk to meet the extra demand. There would, therefore, be a greater quantity of mill*. The quantity would also be improved —or, rathor, the milk would not be so much impoverished by the absorption of the fats after it ia secreted. Repeated experiments show that the longer the interval between the milking, the poorer the milk. If milked as faßt as secreted, there is reason to believe that it would all be ‘stripping.’—United States Dairyman. WATER IN BUTTER. Some buyers of very good-looking and well.flavoured butter complain that it ia too salt, while the maker insists that it has not been over-salted. The same buyers say that a slice or print of the butter left exposed in a warm room will iu two or three days become thickly enorusted with salt, which may be scaled off, leaving the butter still quite salt enough. That is true, too, and yet the maker may not have spoken falsely in regard to oversalting—that is, if the old standard of an ounce to the pound is not so regarded. But let the purchaser weigh the print or slice carefully before exposing it to the air, and then, after a few days, without removing the salt coating which hasappeared, weigh it again. Ho will find that it has decreased 10, or even 15 per cent, in weight. How is this : Simply a dairyman’s trick of adulterating his butter with water. To this adulteration or extended butter he adds the usual weight of salt per pound, making it perceptibly to salt, even to those who are aoenstomed to salt butter. In the warm room the water comes to the surface and is evaporated, leaving the objeetional incrustation. —-Rural New Yorker. WHAT IS THE CAUSE ? Has the size of the animal anything to do with the quality of the beef, beyond the fact that one in good con lition makes better baef than one in poor? Daes.the size of the cow have anything to do with the quality of her milk? Does the size of the mess necessarily have anything to do with its quality ? Does the cow that gives the smallest mess always produce the richest milk? Do the smallest Jerseys give the richest milk? Does the Jersey that gives the smallest mess give the richest milk ? If these questions cannot be answered in the affirmative, then there is a screw loose somewhere in the reasoning of men who assume that a large mess of milk is, as a rule, inferior in quality, thereby Implying that the. small mess must be rich. The fact is that size has nothing to do with the matter, but selection and breeding have, The small size of the Jersey is an accident, to a great extent, while the rich quality of her milk has been secured by selection and line breeding, if not inbreeding for many generations. The Freisian cow is large, and she gives a large mess of milk, because she has been bred from time immemorial with these endsinjviaw. Her mess, however, is not so much larger than that of the Jersey, when we consider her size, and there does not appear to be any reason in nature why her mess of milk, by careful selec

tion and breeding, may not be raised to the quality of the Jersey. If the latter gives thirty pounds of milk a day, from which three pounds of butter is made, why may not a cow twice her size give sixty pounds of milk a day, from which six pounds of lautter can be made, without any more tax on the system in the one case than in the other. Fat is an element in nature that is easily obtained, and the appropriation of it does not materially exhaust the soil. Butter production does not as rapidly impoverish the soil as cheese or beef production does. But, to secure the carbonaceous element in the form of butter fat, we must induce a peculiar physiological condition of the cow. Just what that condition is, and just how to best secure it, are two things to be found out. We now only know that by carefully selecting and breeding from cows that have the physiological tendency to secrete butter fat, we not only can transmit that tendency to the offspring, but increase and intensify it. The subject is one worthy of the most careful attention of scientists. It may be that we shall never be able to tell why one family of bovine animals is given to the secretion of butter fats, and another puts fat around the kidneys and among the muscles, any more than we can tell why one seed produces white corn and another yellow, or why one seed produces wheat and another corn. We cannot change the nature of either, so far as we yet know, and perhaps we cannot change the innate qualities of the. animal. But_we can depend upon the seed being true to its kind, and on this we can base our practice, se as to secure enough of the kind that we want. Possibly we can rear cows cf large size that will give large yields of milk of superior quality, the yield always being proportioned to the size, without detriment to the constitution of the animal. We may yet get the Jersey quality into the Friesian milk. The idea.is worth consideriug, and we believe an effort in that direction is worth m iking. The suggestion is mad e for what it may be worth.—Prairie Farmer.