THE DAIRY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 933, 17 January 1890, Page 19

THE DAIRY.

WHY THE STRIPPINGS ARE SO RICH IN CREAMHENRY STEWART. Every person who knows anything of milk knows that the last drawn milk of a cow is richer than the other milk ; but the reason for this is not generally known. Indeed, it has been a subject of dispute, and the explanation usually given L qnite erroneous. The structure of the cow’s udder well studied will explain why the strippings are so rick. Any fact learned is interesting in tvvo ways : first, because it is pleasant for the mere knowledge gained and the relation of it to matters of daily life ; and second, because the knowledge is. a guide to the right kind of piactice in daily work. A cow’s udder is composed of a solid mass of glandular substances apparently made up. of very small nodules or masses, through which a fine membrane passes so as to separate th.e whole into cells or divisions. The udder is divided into two parts by a membrane from the front to the back, making two separate and distinct halves. The halves are not divided, and yet the front and back parts are distinct from each other ; each quarter being connected with the teat which belongs to it by the small cells or divisions and small pipes or ducts leading from them to the teat. The upper o-irfc of the udder is made up almost wholly of fat; the lower part has very little fat in it. C nsequentlv with this structure the udder cannot, as many have taught, be a simple reservoir of milk in which the cream can rise to the top as it accumulates in the udder. The udder, in fact, can hold very little milk. In .a recent examination of an udder by careful dissection, the combined spaces or ducts in it were found to be insufficient to hold half a pint of milk ; but the milk was held as by a sponge of close texture all through the glands of the udder, and in the small cells mentioned, which thus kept the milk as if thousands of small bladders, each holding milk, were gathered into another and much larger bladder, but . all the milk found would not measure a pint> and this udder was taken from a cow milking several quarts at a time, that was slaughtered twelve hours afser having being milked. , The milk, therefore, must be produced in the adder as the milking proceeds ; and the cow may prevent the flow of milk by repressing this action. The giving of milk is clearly a voluntary act of the oow, and as she lets it down the milk flows from these cells into the passages leading to the teats. Necessarily the milk from the upper part of the udder cm only come down last; and the glandular substance in this part of the udder being mostly fat,, the milk is made up largely of fat, which is ming ed with the serum or milky fluid that escapes from the glands by a change of the substance into milk. Thus the richness of the strippings is accounted One useful lesson may be learned from this study. It has been said that the richness of the food of the cow in fat does not inorease the richness of the milk. The palpable unreasonableness of this, evident to those dairymen who have found it profitable to feed food rioh in f it to their cows is distinctly proved by the facts mentioned. For it is admitted that rich food does make fat in the animal. No one is hardy enough to deny that. But if the rich, food increases the fat in the udder, and this fat mixed in the glandular substance, and seen by the aid of the microscope to exist in the form of small globules in the glandular substance, escapes as this substance breaks down. into the serum of the milk and makes’the milk from this part of the udder exceedingly rich in fat, then this fat (the butter) mu t have been increased by the fat in the food. And the practical experience of the dairymen that it pays to give oil meal and corn meal that are rich in fat to i-orease the butter yield, is corroborated and confirmed, in spite of the belief of persons who may think otherwise.