DAIRY SKIMMINGS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1290, 19 November 1896, Page 5

DAIRY SKIMMINGS.

As warm weather approaches the task of the dairyman becomes more difficult and the quality of the product is harder to maintain. Temperature must in some way be controlled, either with ice or cold spring water, if good results are to be expected, and the work will also be rendered easier if some method for aerating the milk immediately after it is drawn be adopted. We are not now advising the purchase of any expensive machinery for the purpose, nor indeed of any machinery. Those who have learnaid the value of aeration can determine for themselves the extent to which they can afford to go, to do it as easily and conveniently. Others who have paid no attention to it had better employ primitive, home devised means for. the purpose to start with. Pouring the milk back and forth from one vessel to another is better than nothing. A shute might be easily devised over which the milk could be slowly poured, which would do the work quite well. The whole secret of the matter is tlie exposure of as much of the milk to pure air as possible, and in as diffused condition as possible. Not every one is aware of the advantages which aeration gives in controlling the bacterial changes of milk ; and these changes become more active and more rapid as the weather grows warmer. Milk so treated will keep sweet longer and is much less liable to produce butter with undesirable flavours. With fairly good aeration and a reasonable degree of control of the temperature the maintenance of quality is rendered a much easier task.

Fine writing applied to the milch cow : I admire a horse as much as anyone, but it is my deliberate opinion that the Jersey cow is the most beautiful and most perfect animal' on the foot stool to-day. From the big, tender and thoughtful eves, which give such

character to her clean-cut dished face, to the switch that graces her tapering tail there is not another animal that walks the earth having more grace, beauty and general usefulness. I love a horse, and I love a good, genuine, honest horse race ; but whenever I hear the talk of the moral idiots who follow him round to gamble on him, who never owned one, who care nothing for the business, except to gamble on it, and who would just as soon bet on two tin horses, run by electricity, around a two foot ring, as on two live ones, on a mile track, if the gamble chances were equal, I feel it most unjust, writes Trotwood, in The Farmers Review, that such a noble animal should be forced to associate with beasts beneath him. But there is no temptation about the Jersey cow. The most con firmed gambler could scarcely find any means by which to gamble in her. All her paths lead to sweetness, contentment, honest living,and broader thinking. The very sight of the pure, clean dairy, pungent with the aroma of the cooling milk in the darkling waters, is itself a sermon on honesty ; while the tinkling of the liny streams that purl around the tray of hard gold butter, and the molten gold of the yellow cream, is the music that accompanies the sermon. Follow her into the field, and unless your ancestors have thrown off on you terribly in the formation of your head, you will see life in all its beauty and truth, you will grow bigger and broader each day, as you gradually learn that the universe is immense, that God is infinitely great, and you are infinitely small.