SHEEP’S MILK CHEESE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 November 1941, Page 6

SHEEP’S MILK CHEESE

BEING MADE IN BRITAIN. LESSON LEARNED FROM CZECH REFUGEES. Czechoslovak refugees are helping Britain to get cheese from sheep’s milk. They have had experience of ewe-milking in Czechoslovakia which used to export 2,000 tons of ewe’s milk cheese a year. The making of this novel cheese has become practicable by the invention of a new milking machine just designed in Britain, and, after experiments at the Northampton shire Farm Institute, 400 ewes a day are now being milked by it. The ewes are put in pens in units of six and milking is done at a pulsation speed of 100 perl minute. During the milking the milk is automatically transferred to one of two churns, either of which can be emptied without affecting the main vacuum, and power is supplied by a h.p. engine driving a rotary vacuum pump. British farmers are now to be encouraged to milk their ewes, if only for a short period after weaning the lambs. In both butterfat and curd ewe’s milk is nearly three times as rich as cow’s milk and each ewe could provide between 11b. and 21bs. of curd a week for at least four months of the year. There are so many ewes in Britain that the people could, it is estimated, get as much cheese from them as they ate before the war and still leave some over for export.