About Testing Milk.

Opunake Times, Volume I, Issue 33, 23 October 1894, Page 3

About Testing Milk.

The value of a cow for dairy purposes depends upon several factors, the two most important of which arc (he quantity and the quality of the milk. We have some cows at this station that give milk which contains about 3 per cent fat. Such cows must give about thirty-three pounds of milk to make a pound of butter. We have others that run 5 per cent fat, in which eases twenty pounds will make one pound. of butter. After giving milk several months these rich cows sometimes run up to 7 per cent fat, in which case about fourteen pounds of milk will make one pound of butter. With this knowledge of the amount of fat in milk wo have only to go to the records of milking to learn the standing of each cow.

I can assure the reader that the 8 per cent cows would have gone long ago had we not washed to keep them for the purpose of studying some features of their milk that the milk from the other cows did not posses?.

I do not wish to be understood as insisting that the richest milk is always the cheapest. Some cows will give very rich milk, but in such small quantity that they are not profitable, while a cow giving 3 per cent milk may be one of the most profitable on the farm. It does not matter whether the milk is of rich or medium quality so long as the total amount of fat produced is entirely satisfactory. A cow must give a birge amount of butter for the year if she is to return any profits for feed and keep. With the methods of testing milk now before the public, there is no reason why the dairyman should not know- tho relative value of all the cows in his herd. It does seem to bfc necessary that each' man should own a testing apparatus; he can take a sample of milk and have the factory make a test for a small fee. A factory using the Babcock test could well afford to make,the fak determinations for its patrons for five cents each. But unless we remember that the fat test is only one of two figures, which must be multiplied together to get the true result, we may do the cow rank injustice. To get the other figure, the dairyman must weigh the milk from his cows. To do this a spring balance can be purchased for a dollar or tw 7 0, aud % hung up in (be dairy ba-n, and tho milk can be weighed thereon daily, or if this be too much labour, let the milk be weighed once a w'eek, and on the same days always, and careful records made.

A sheet of brown manilla paper can be ruled with a lead pencil in a few minutes and tacked upon a board with a whole at the top, which can be jiung upon a nail close by the scales. The cows can be named or numbered, and the amount of milk set in the appropriate place with very little trouble. I know that many will say that this is too much trouble which helps a man about his business. Nothing will open the dairyman’s eyes more than weighing the milk and having these analysis made. Nine times out of ten, after such an examination, there will be some cows for sale at any price to the local stock buyers.—Experimental Station Bulletin.