INFLUENCE OF THE SEPARATOR ON BUTTER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2240, 4 February 1897, Page 4

INFLUENCE OF THE SEPARATOR ON BUTTER.

The lecture by Mr Campbdl on "Tbe Influence,pf the Separator on Butter,'' an epitome of which w&s given in last week's issue, naturally evoked criticism from the members of the Agricultural Discussion Society before whom it was delivered, and as Scotchmen are credited twth a rare capacity for notiog and turning to advantage changing conditions and influences sensibly affecting their industrial pursuits, the debate which followed the address hat more than ordinary interest for all concerned in the butter-making branch of the dairy industry. It is proposed here, therefore, to give a separate summary of the views expressed by the several speakers at the meeting, as illustrative from different standpoints of the influences now in operation which affect tho production and demand in the local markets for Scotch-made butter. The manager of the Dairy Supply Company, Edinburgh (Mr Smith), who led the discussion, said that on hearing the text of the lecture he expected it was the intention to condemn the separator, and was glad to find that was not so. Mr Campbell had certainly condemned the I systems of making butter from fresh and thick separated cream ; but as tho separator was capable of running both thick and thin cream without injury to the cream, the system was not to be condemned because tho operator did not ripen the cream to develop that flavour which Scotch butter acquired from the lapperiDg system. As Mr Campbell said, tho separator has come to stay. It has been vastly improved within the last five years. The speed has been reduced nearly 2000 revolutions per minute ; the bowls are reduced in size, the capacity is increased, the cream is exposed to less violence, and the liability of the globules of fab running together removed. On the point of economy the separator is far ahead of any other system, producing more butter than the lappering system. First-class butter can be made from both systems, but separating is the most economical. In regard to the superiority of lappering milk in the ripening of cream the fact i» that the cream is all on the top of the lappering bine, and that practically thin separated cream would be steeped in as much acid as in lappered milk, and if the cream jar were an open one and the cream well stirred the same flavour and keeping will be produced in fresh batter as from lappered cream. "Mr Campbell had said that Danish butter is not like 'what it used to be, and we admit that 20 years ago w« stocked Danish butter in large quantities, especially in July and August, for winter use, and could make money at it, but now no one in the trade would buy Danish butter forward, the reason being that the foreigner had nade himself thoroughly acquainted with our wants, and altered his system to meet our daily requirements, and the separator had enabled him to do this,"

Mr Grilchmt did not think that in any lecture . Mr Campbell had given there was more room for criticism than in this one. If it had been delivered eight or ten years ago Mr Campbell would have been called utterly unscientific. He (Mr Gilchrist) had helped to carry out an experiment three years ogo for the purpose of linding cut whether from lappered milk or separated cream they could produce the most and best-keeping butter. The whole of the i milk used in the experiment was divided into ', three equal quantities after being well stirred. j Ooe quantity was left to ripen in the usual way ; in which milk is ripened before being churned, ] in the Wosb of Scotland, on the lappering i system. Another wan run through the separator ] ' and the cream was churned sweet. The third j j wac run through the separator and the cream i j ripened and churned. All the operations wer« j . carried out on the most approved principles, j I It was found then that the butter from the ripened separated cream was exactly equal in j quantity to the butter from the iappered milk. He ' came to the conclusion, fchereiore, that from • lappered milk or from separated cream pro- > ■ perly ripened oho could take the very same ' amount of batter. From the sweet cream that I was churned 2£"z were awanting, aud as he | had never seen sweet cream churned before, he i set the buttermilk, ripened it on the lapperiDg 1 system, chnrned it, and got the 2£oz. The , different butters were taken and submitted to tbe judges of a county show — not iv a&y com- i petition, bat simply to obtain the opinion of j I these gentiemen. They fixed upon the sweet ! cream butter, and said it was best ; the { separated cream butter was second and the lappered milk butter was third. The samples were kept for over a week aud then submitted to one of the judges. The sweet cream butter i was nowhere and the lappered milk batter by ! far the best. On being asked what the 2£oa I of butter which he had spoken of recovering I was like, Mr Gilchriob replied that it was in- | clined to be greasy, and appeared to have i been made up of the very small butter-fat ' globules. But of course it hsd not had full ■ advantage in ripening. j ! Mr Alexander Wilson, who is extensively j 1 engaged in dairy-farming, in the course of his I ■ address remarked that " the gentlemen whom I be bad been hearing speak seemed to be of the ! opinion that the separator was not what they i would like it to be, and yet they seemed to like ; it, too. .Now, according to the new system, the cream, should be ripened, and he would quite agree that ' that was richts o't.' " He proceeded to s*y that if it had been the case that these creameries we.re bringing a better price for their butter he would be the first man ' to start the system ; but that had never been | the case. How was it, he asked, that an East t Ktlbride man coming down to Glasgow with his I cart and some butter could sell it at 2d per lb ' more than the best creamery butter in Scot- , land ? The creamery butter might get the prize ' at the shows when it was nice and fresh, but it would net keep sweet for long. Mr Campbell had been severe on the Glasgow people in a previous lecture for their want of cleanliness, and now he was at Berwickshire for it. Mr Wilson "thought Glasgow had ' tholed ' those , remarks very well, bub he would advise Mr Campbell not to speak quits so strongly." ' Mr Hamilton, of Hamilton Bros., in the pro- . vision trade, said that the; first time he had attended the meetings was to hear a lecture on ' the art of dairying about three years ago. He thought he was then tbe only one present who objected to the separating system, and he was laughed at. From what he had heard that night it appeared that the speakers were mostly of hit opinion. As a judge at shows he did not remember ever putting separated butter first. There was no butter like the lappered milk i butter. Owing to the more general use of the separator Irish batter did not keep now as once it did. Mr Stirling, who followed, gave an interesting example from his own cxperionce where the cream extracted by the separator had an impaired flavour, being greasy, nasty, and not at all equal to that got by the old sytem. He thought; perhaps the cream might havo been slightly churned by the action of the separator, and perhaps it was for the same reason they could never get butter made from it to the requisite hardness. Another speaker, Mr Brand, said he believed he had the first separator used in Glasgow 17 years ago, but it was very different from those made nowadays. He had made experiments with fresh butter made from lapperesl milk and from separated milk. The former kept good for 10 days, while the latter had " tasted " in a few days, and at the end of a week was not edible. Mr Brand mentioned the case of a grocer in Glasgow who advertised his butter as follows : — First prize butter, Is 8d per lb ; creamery butter, Is 4d per lb ; and Ayrshire rolls, Is 2d per lb. The reason that the first-mentioned fetched 4d to 6d per lb more than the creamery butter was because it was goj principally from Ren- , frewshire and Lanarkshire farmers, who only made butter from the milk which their in.-

dividual farm produced, while creamery butter w»3 -made from the unilk obtained from 50 to 100 dairies and raised from a great variety of feeding. Air John Spier said the lecturer had said a great deal with which they agreed. Iv one direction the separator had done an enormous amount of harm. If it were not for the separator much of the milk wh ; ch can hy its help bd converted rapidly, into comparatively good butter would become too quickly unfit for use in those hob countries which *ro now supplying so much imported butter. In replviog to tho gentlemen who took part in the disoussion, Mr Campbell said ha wiaued the south could have heard the debate that had taken pltct, as he thought they would not then continue so confident in their methods. Ho wished to knock the idea on the head thai' it was the separator that did tbe injury; When milk was injured by the action of the separator, tho reason generally was bec&use it had not been, worked intelligently. The cream e hould not be taken off so thick as has been the practice, and then it should be judiciously ripened. One truth stands out plear in this discussion : it it that however the masses may lack discrimination, a conniderable proportion of consumers in Scotland sbill insist on »r .ma and keeping qualities in butter, and acoordioly reject the insipid imported article. In England a revolution in tastes is already manifest. "Merlin" (Profe«sor Long) writes recently in the F.eld in reference to tho change : "Now a reaction has net in, and the British public are satiated with foreign buttsr, and would gladly pitroni«e the home produce if of r. , quality to suit their tastes, whether produced in a farmhouse or creamery. Ifc 'a often asserted, with some show of reason, that the finest batter is that made at a farmhouse. Under all-round peculiarly favourable circumstauc&s this may probably be so, but at the best the quantity so produced is so mfmitesimally small tb.Rt its effect on market prices would be inappreciable." It has bei'n shown very clearly that while " separator butter " fulfll3 one condition which wholesale, buyers are properly insistent upon— viz., uniformity of quality — the article is too' frequently deficient in the flavour, aroma, firmness, and keeping qualities so characteristic of the farmhouse product skilfully made. It has been made as distinctly evident that the dtficiencifs cf separator butter in these desirable attributes level it clown to nearly oleomargarice value, and that can»uuaer« are becoming gradually lees inclined to make au appreciable distinction in price between the two. The fault rests in the main with careless users of separators, who give little or no heed to the ripening of the cre»m. This process, as every skilled butter-maker knows, in of great importance, *nd great care is to be exercised duriug ripening if a good butter in to be obtained. At creameries, where milk from many farms must be mixed and where dirty milk has an opportunity of polluting clean milk, there must always be a danger, as Mr Campbell says, of a somewhat irregular ripening. "Moreover, when cream is obtained by a separator, as is the case in creameries, the 15 per cent, of cream taken c.ff contains more than 15 per cent, of the bacteria originally iv the milk — fchut ;is to say, th^separated milk is to some exteut purified, while the cream receives more than its share of organisms." To cope with thes?, ifc is now the almost universal practice in Daninh creameries to add to the freshly-separated cream 3 or 4- per cent, of Imilk ripened with a pure culture in order to suppress the action of obnoxious bacteria.

Sheep Ketarns.

From the revised sheep returns, it now* Appears that on April 30 of last year there nan a decrease in the number of sheep in the colony of 688,111 as against tba number in the previous year. As will bo leen from the appeuded table, the decrease was felt chiefiv in the South Islaud :—: —

It will be seen that the North Island experi- „ euced an increase of 137,090, and the South a decrease of 825,201. Coincident with the change in the number of sheep was also a change in the number of owners. Thus :

It will be observed that the number of owners of sheep in the North Island increased by 808 and in the South Island by only 97.

Colonial Produce.

Me R. E. N. Twopeny appears to have been instantly successful, in his mission to London as the representative of the Australian Frozen Meat Export Association. His object I was to organise a committee in London to coi operate with the Australian committee in reguI lating and expanding the frozen meat trade in England. Ou August 12 of last year he gave some details of the proposal, saying inter alia :— "Broadly speaking, the scheme contemplates two bodies — an association of freezing companies in Australia, and a committee of banks' and pastoral finance companies' managers in London. The novelty of the conception lies in the latter proposal. It is this committee which

is by far the most important part of the scheme. To them is assigned tho duty of supervising tUo disposal of Australian meat in London, a task in which they are to have--the assistance of a ni*ri>rf>t inspector with experience in the Smithfield trade, and a special representative sent from Australia by the fre< zing companies, upon whom the executive work will fall. This committee will regulate prices and act conjointly on behalf of all meat and 1 produce consigned by the frepzing compauien, not notu»lly supeineding Neisous and other agents and salesmen, but supervising thorn. The/ will forward advice to the association of freezing in Australia, whose only apparent function is to act as a means of communication between the companien for arriving at such combined action as they may think desirable from time to time." Am we alao suggestsd at the same time New Zealand freezing companies will do well to witch the development of the scheme jcarefully with a view to judging whether it will be ,to their interest to join in later on.

Wilful Waste.

The London Chamber of Commerce has been drawing attention ia the colonies to the damage and consequent loss canned by the ill-flaying of hides. A circular pointing' oat and explaining the loss w*s drawn np and circulated. The author of the circular was Mr Charles Raeke, of Rocke and Sou?, wool, leather, skin, and pelt factors. London. He happens to be passing through Nttw Zealand at preient, and was interviewed by an Evening Post reporter at Wellington. "An showing the loss," says our contemporary, •• he quoted figureß based on the "average of the four years anditig 3Lot December, 1895, which showa'd. that the number of hides imported into the United Kingdom from the Australasian' .colonies annually is about 540,000. The number of sheepjkim «enb from the colonies -to ' the Uniticd Kingdom and Europe is about 12, 294-, 600 par annum. Expert opinion* show that the estimated !os» ■on tho whole number of hides received c»nnot be less than 2s per bide, and on the sheepskins 2d each skiu, and thin due only to reckless butchering. In round numbers this means an annual loss to the colonies of £156,455— £54.000 on hides and > £102,455 on the sheepskins." The remedy, according to Mr Rocko, is morn elbow and lets kiiifw. It is satisfactory to learn that the flaying is much better done in New Zealand than in Australia. New Zealand pelts, Mr Rocke says, aro far superior to those of Australia, owing to climatic conditions, combined with the breeding. In Australia they go in largely for merinos, whiob produce the poorest hides ; while ia New Zealand the skins of the 1 crossbred^ make first-class leather. We would commend this matter to the considera- - lion of those interested, merely pointing out in conclusion that in Chicago and elsewheru ill flaying is unknown, and yet the work oC slaughter is carried on just as exbeditioribly *s it is here.

District. Luckland fapier Vellington-West Coast farlborough-Nelson ... lanterbury-Kaikoura... >tago ... ... ... 1895. 2,268 1,446 3.782 1,474 3,82« 4,102 16^898 1696. 2,5-23 1,58 a 4,092 1,695 3,960 3,944 17,703

District. 1896. Auckland ... 819,221 tfapier 4,242,518 WeUingtonWjikt Coast ... 4,069,967 MarlboroughNelson ... 889,863 Dan terburyKaikoura .. 5.121.393 Dtago 3,995,493 19,138,493 Increaie + or 1895. Decrease - 846,873 - 27,652 4.217.2-J2 + 25,310 3,930,5tl + 139,426 906,307 - 16,444 5.559,990 - 438,592 4,365,661 - 370,165 19,826,604 688,111