MILKING – MACHINES.

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume VII, Issue 1, 15 July 1913, Page 44

MILKING - MACHINES.

D. Cuddie.

During the last decade, and more particularly during the last five years, the installation of mechanical milking-machines has been widely adopted in this country. A large number of the machines are now in operation throughout the greater part of the dairying season. The fact that many of the larger herds are milked by this means denotes that a larger quantity of milk is drawn by machines than the number of users would indicate.

Even before the advent of milking-machines some of the milk supplied, to dairy factories was not produced under the best of conditions,' and the addition of the milking-machine to the other utensils which have to be cleansed on the farm has not lightened the duties of the individual responsible for the washing-up. .' While some dairymen are of such a temperament that they cannot brook anything that is dirty or unclean, and will see that even a milking-machine is kept in a condition compatible with the production of clean milk, we have evidence which goes to show that, unfortunately, this class is not as numerous as it should be. There are a number of dairymen who can keep an ordinary bucket or can looking fairly clean when the corners are easily seen, but

there are many such dairymen who are not equal to keeping clean the unseen corners of a milking-machine. The large number of mechanical milkers now in use has had a distinct effect on the average cleanliness of the milk supplied to dairy factories. It has been generally recognized amongst the Dairy. Instructors and factory-managers for some time that while the milk from some farms using machines is satisfactory the major portion is more or less depreciated through the change from hand to machine milking. . The unsatisfactory condition of the dairy-produce market this past season has made buyers more critical, with the result that complaints regarding quality have been more numerous, than usual. Milking-machine milk has come in for its share of criticism in this connection, and the Dairy Instructors have therefore turned their attention more distinctly of late to the -giving of instruction on the farms where these machines have been in. use. The visits of inspection that have been made to the farms have confirmed the opinions of the officers regarding the detrimental effect of unclean machines upon the general purity of the milk, for in many cases the visit to the farm was preceded by the making of a curd test at the factory, the subsequent inspection at the farm being merely to locate the cause of the inferiority indicated by the test. In carrying out this work during recent months the Instructors have inspected some 278 milking-machines, and their reports on these plants show that, so far as cleanliness is concerned, the extreme limits are far removed. While a few were so clean that there appeared to be room for no improvement, others were so dirty that notice for a general clean-up within a minimum of time had to be given. Of the 278 machines inspected, 64 could be classed as clean, 75 as fair only, and 139 as dirty. These numbers correspond to the percentages of 23, 27, and 50 respectively. The figures thus obtained would suggest that practically onehalf of the milking-machines in use are contaminating factors, and are depreciating the value of . the manufactured article. Much of the contamination produces gas in the curd in cheesemaking, causing openness in the body of the resultant product, a fault which has been more prevalent in our cheese of late years. The figures indicate a large field for work of improvement through educational means, and lower prices for inferior quality will doubtless force directorates of dairy companies to expect their managers to discriminate more closely in the : quality of the milk received at the factories. Until a stricter, classification of the raw material is more general, little good can be done on the farms.