146 AGRICULTURE OF MAIXE. 



of the COW. ^lany of the tie-ups are in such a condition that 

 it is almost impossible to keep a cow clean. The filth gets into 

 the pail and into the milk and it is impossible to strain it out, 

 just about as impossible as it is to get a spoonful of sugar out 

 of a cup of coffee after it has dissolved. Milk from a cow that 

 is perfectly healthy is sterile after rejecting the first two or 

 three streams from the udder, so that all the contamination 

 comes from outside things, either from the cow, from the 

 milker's clothes, from strainers that are not properly scalded 

 out even*' time they are used (especially when they are cloth), 

 or from similar conditions. The State Board of Health in 

 Boston, where we ship cream, will allow us 500,000 germs per 

 cubic centimeter. This is a lot of germs we think, but when we 

 consider that it takes about 300 bacteria to make the thickness 

 of a card, it is a pretty small affair. We have had some samples 

 of cream which we had purchased tested by the State of Maine 

 Laboratory of Hygiene to see how many bacteria it contained. 

 I have a table here that Prof. Evans of Augusta sent us. We 

 made the regular run of cream. We had 200 gallons of heavy 

 cream, equal to 400 gallons of thin cream. We ran it through 

 the pasteurizer at 160 degrees, then we cooled it down to about 

 40 degrees, and put the cans into ice water. We did not sub- 

 merge them, but had the water as high as the cream in the can. 

 The next day I took out a sample of cream (it was four days 

 old) and it had an acidity of 1.5 1, and contained 300 germs per 

 cubic centimeter. The 5th day I took a sample out of the same 

 can and there were 560 germs per cubic centimeter; the 6th 

 day there were 980 and the 7th day 2,100. You see after the 

 sixth day they develop more rapidly. By the time the cream 

 was landed in Boston and delivered to the consumer it must 

 have been seven or eight days old. It is sometimes left in the 

 stores a couple of days, and perhaps some of it is 15 days old 

 before reaching the consumer. That shows you what the 

 creamery men of Maine are doing with regard to killing these 

 bacteria. But that does not make clean cream. 



With regard to stable inspection, the cow testing associations 

 I think are doing a wonderful work. It is a step in the right 

 direction. I should be glad to see one in even.^ community 

 where there are 25 or 30 farmers. The expense is not large. 



