KEPOKT OF THE AGRICULTURE OF AYRSHIRE. 83 



to the richer composition of the small quantities of milk ill zn 

 yielded. 



It depends entirely upon the farmer's run of customers, and 

 being conveniently situated, whether he will churn the whole 

 milk, and sell the produce in the form of butter and butter-milk, 

 or churn the cream only and have ski turned- rnilk to dispose of. 

 If the butter-milk can't be got sold (rarely the case), it may be 

 used for feeding pigs — a profitable investment enough ; and the 

 skimmed, if not sold, can be converted into cheese — a kind of 

 diet the less said about the better. Some try one way, sotne an- 

 other, and for some years bygone some have been trying all 

 ways, and pinched after all to get their rents scraped together, 

 poor souls. Butter making has generally been .considered the 

 more lucrative mode of turning the cow's produce into cash, but 

 with the good prices for cheese of late, and looking to the extra 

 women's wages, extra house-food, and extra trouble, connected 

 with butter and milk selling, the writer is of opinion that cheese 

 making, meanwhile, is equally as profitable. A few carry on a 

 mixed sort of system whereby more or less of the cream is 

 turned into butter, agreeably to amount of demand and the rela- 

 tive price at which butter is rating, and the remaining milk and 

 cream made into cheese, so that the latter product may be 

 "half-and-half," "three-fourths-fnll," or nearly " full-milk," ac- 

 cording to quantity of cream abstracted. A medium quality of 

 cheese will always be in demand, as the largest consumers of 

 cheese in Scotland are the workiiig-c'asses, and they look about 

 as much to price as quality. Besides, this mixed system, is the 

 most profitable for a good many of the cheese makers who are 

 not first-class, and although looked upon rather suspiciously by 

 the dealers, yet nothing can be said against it. Cheeses are not 

 sold like pigs in pocks. Before purchasing, they can be handled, 

 and paled, and tasted, by the merchant, and, if he is not com- 

 petent to price any quality of cheese, one with another compara- 

 tively, he is not lit for his business. There is no fraud in a. 

 farmer making his cheese of any quality, colour, shape, or size, 

 he may think proper, but he must not (in absence of the article) 

 sell a thing for what it is not. In respect to the great mass of 

 makers, however, there is as much cream got from the " skint- 

 milk " used by the farmer's family and servants as affords the 

 modicum of butter required for home use, and " sweet-milk 

 Dunlop cheese" is in nearly all cases, as represented, fall-milk. 

 The farmers — or, rather, their wives — generally, indeed, are 

 extra honest on this point. Cheeses are made Sundays and 

 Saturdays. 



The practice of letting the milch cows ll abowing " is pretty 

 common througheut Ayrshire, particularly in dairies on a larger 



