THE DAIRY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 896, 3 May 1889, Page 18

THE DAIRY.

‘SAPSAGO’ (3CHABZXEGER) CHEESE. HENRY • STEWART. This rather rare and curious cheese affords an instance of a corruption of language which completely covers and hides the true meaning. Sapsago is very clearly a corruption or derivative of the German term Sohabzieger, from Schaben grated, and Zieger curd. This cheese is made in Switzerland, and chiefly in the canton of Glarus, where it is locally termed fromage vert de Glaris or green cheese of Glarus, by those who use tho French language. It is somewhat like our pineapple cheese, a sort of double manufacture, (the curd being put through a secondary process which gives to the product its peculiar character. This cheese is made as follows 'The milk, collected upon the mountain pastures, is skimmed and curded in the usual manner. The curd is then put in vessels made of fur or spruce bark, pierced with holes through which the whey escapes. In this condition it is kept in the cool pure air of the high mountains until the autumn, when the herds are brought down to their winter quarters in the valleys. During this time a slow fermentation, moderated by the coolness, goes on in the curd. Wnen the curd iB removed to the valley farms it is put in sacks and loaded on to the wagons. On its arrival the sacks of curd are put in a press, heaped one upon the other, and squeezed to ezpel the remaining whey. The curd is left under pressure for three or four weeks. It is then ground in a mill, consisting of a circular trench or pit of cut stone, closely joined and cemented. A strong vertical shaft of wood is fitted in the centre and to this is fixed a stone roller of a truncated-conical shape, which weighs a ton and revolves slowly around the circular floor. When tho curd" is put into the mill it is mixed with two and one-half per cent, of its weight of dried and pulverised leaves of a species of Trifolium, having deep blue or purple blossoms, locally called blue melilot (but more probably Trifolium alpinum), and four to five per cent, of salt. During the grinding or crushing, the attendant takes care that the work is evenly done and the curd is passed repeatedly under the roller and ground to a smooth paste. The curd is then shoveled out of the mill into a shallow vat, from which it is put into moulds of the form of a truncated cone, of vaiious sizes, from one pound upward. The pasty curd is pressed into the moulds by a

oestle of hard wood ; and for the easy removal of the sticky past the mould is smeared with sweet oil and then lined with a cloth. As soon as the cheeses are firmly sot they are taken from the moulds and placed in drying rooms on shelves, where they are carefully guarded against contact with air currents,bj 7 which the cheeses would be cracked and made to crumble from excessive dryneES. The drying continues for a year or more, until the cheeses are quite hard. The Schabzieger cheese is of a clear green colour. The largest cheeses found m the Paris market, where they are mostly sold, are about four inches in height, and. the same in diameter, and they sell for sixtyfive cents per kilogram or about twentyseven oents per pound. They are served at the table grated and are oaten with pastry, pies, or with fruit, at the dessert. Their odour is strong, and it requires—for most persons—a considerable training before the palate and stomach become accustomed to the peculiar smell and flavour. This cheese has been an article of manufacture and trade in Switzerland for more than three hundred years. DON’T STINT THE CALVESA calf .is worth nearly as much as a cow. Not that.it will bring as much money, but at a very small outlay it will be brought to a cow, and ii well fed and cared for it will make a good cow. The best of all grain foods for a calf is bran, and although the standard feeding tablos give rye bran a higher value than wheat bran, the latter is considerably the better food. W heat bran contains more than three per cent, of sugar and rye bran less than one per cer.t. Sugar being wholly digestible and easily changed into vital heat, wheat bran is a good food for young animals in the winter. At the same price per pound as corn it is worth twice as much, not only for its nitrogen, but for tLe phosphates it contains and which go to make up bone. This is the reason of its high value for feeding young stock, colts and pigs as well as calvts. It is a safe food. No one ever hurt hi 3 animals by giving them too much bran. It has every element of hay and corn combined, but while it ia a good food it should be used. CLEANLINESS IN THE DAIRY. (Henry Stewart.) When cows are stabled all night and the greater part of the day, it becomes a matter of concern how they should be littered so as to Becure the moat perfect cleanliness. Swamp muck dried is the best of all absorbents, but it is objectionable as litter because the dust penetrates the cow’s coat, and however well she is brushed it will be falling into the milk pail at times. Sawdust will absorb the moisture very well, but it is not valuable as manure, while swamp muck is. Cobsequently I nae both of these in the stable. Plonty of dried muck (or peat) is spread in the gutter and iu the manure cellar, and hard wood sawdust is spread under the cows. By a proper arrangement of the floor, the stall, and tho ties, and the gutter, the cows may be kept clean, with very little currying. The gutter should be half filled with the dry peat so that no liquid remains for the cows to draggle their tails in, and two or threo inches of sawdust should bo spread on the floor. Hard wood sawdust is better for the soil than pine, which di cays very slowly. Thoiough carding and brushing arc indispensable for cleanliness. The waste of the akin, the scale or dandruff which peels off, and all loose hairß are taken off, and the dried perspiration, which has a disagreeable odour, and is really an excrement, is removed. Tho friction is exceedingly beneficial to the animals, stimulating the 3Uin, encouraging the perspiration and removing from the blood those used up waste matters which are offensive, and would, if not thus got rid of, escape with the milk. This is the cause of what has been called the animal odour of the cows and the milk, and which has been truly charged with exercising an injurious effect upon tho milk as a decomposing ferment. But the true odour of a, clean,°healthy cow is not disagreeable, much less fetid. Virgil wrote of the sweet breath of the heifers, and any dairyman may experience the same if he will take pains to enable the skin to throw off the waste matters which will naturally pass off when the cows are free to clean themselves by rubbing tbeir skins, and in other ways. Exposure to foul air is uncleanliness. The Btables should be not only well cleaned and purified by plenty of fresh litter and plaster, whioh neutralises the odour of a stable, but also by ample ventilation with abundant space for each cow. A cow eighty square feet of floor space and nine feet above the floor for a sufficient supply of fresh air ; that is, four feet of the floor of a stable twenty feet wide and nine feet high; so that wide passages in front and rear of the Btalls are needed for health as well as convenience. 'Good health ia one of the elements of cleanliness, for disease of any kind is always productive of fetor of breath, or exhalation, or excrement, which being caused by a wrong internal condition will certainly affect the milk. Clean food is another element of cleanliness, and pure water is included. Perhaps there is no other place except a chemist s laboratory where greater attention must be given to secure perfect cleanliness and entire absence from all interfering matter than in a dairy, including the stable as a most important part of it.