VARIATIONS IN MILK

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1678, 27 April 1904, Page 65

VARIATIONS IN MILK

The recent experiments on tho yield and composition of milk from cow®, conducted by Mr Dymond, chemist, to the Essex County Council, has once mere brought one or two points to the front which have been lost sight of lately. Everybody knows the story of the family which kept one cow to. yield milk for the household, the said cow being milked in alternate weeks by two serving-men. It was noticed that every second week the yield of milk, cream and butter was greater than in the other alternate week. A watch was -set, and it was found that one man petted the animaJl and made much of heir, thus getting an increased yield of everything, while the other did not trouble'-to make himself agreeable to her, and thus got a lessened yield all round. Now, the chemist has, among other points, shown us this like and dislike 'of the animal reduced to actual figures and percentages. In this particular case it was found that the. difference between a good milker and an inferior one when reduced to percentages "was as follow®: —There was 17 per cent, more butter fat in the milk, _ ancl there was 22 per cent more of milk /yielded to good milking as against bad. Putting these two things together, we fincl in rotund figures that there may he as much as 25 per cent, of difference l to the farmer in bis cash return®. The moral of -the whole is that we ought to. get milkers that the cows will like ; hut this immediately prompts the question, where are we to get them ? In these days of short-hour movements, when able-bodied men actually maintain that 8 hours out of the 24 ils quite long enough to work, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get milkers of any kind at all, and the invention of a satisfactory milking machine would he a perfect godsend to dairy farmers.