102 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



FEEDING VALUE OF SKIM MILK. 

 By Prof. W. H. Jokuan, Director of Experiment Station. 



[Given at Xew Gloucester Dairy Conference.] 



Mr. Chairman and Oentlemen : The subject I have to talk about 

 this morning is one that has to do with the dollars and cents of the 

 business farmer. I shall not attempt any very elaborate discussion, 

 but shall present some facts and illustrate them as beat I may with 

 the exhibit I have here and the figures on the blackboard. 



The question of the dairy interests of Maine I conceive to be 

 one of the most important so far as the farmer is concerned, and no 

 insignificant part of that question is the value to the farmer for use 

 upon the farm of the waste products of the dairy. And in order to 

 understand more fully what those waste products are I am going to 

 speak first of whole milk, milk as we take it from the cow ; what it 

 is and what it contains. Of course you all know it is very largely 

 water ; but the amount of water in milk, or in other words, the 

 amount of solid matter, varies a great deal. It varies with indi- 

 vidual animals, with breeds, and somewhat according to the method 

 in which the animals are fed. I have brought here this morning 

 some tubes containing the constituents of a quart of milk ; not the 

 old-fashioned quart of two and a half pounds, but the one that 

 weighs two pounds and a seventh. 



Now we find one constituent of milk to be mineral matter. If 

 you were to boil down a hundred pounds of milk you would get a 

 dry residue, and if that were burned you would still have something 

 left that is not combustible which we call the ash, similar to the 

 ashes you have left afier burning wood. And there would be in a 

 hundred pounds of milk pra.ctically three-fourths of a pound of 

 mineral matter. It is the material of which is built to some extent 

 the bone of a human being. Up to a certain period in our lives we 

 all had to get what bonj- framework was formed out of the mineral 

 matter of milk. Now of course the amount which is burned off is 

 much larger. If you were to dry down a hundred pounds of milk 

 you would have a varying quantity of dry matter. It would vary, 

 for instance, in the case of the animals that are represented here on 

 the board, Shorthorn, Holstein, Ayrshire and Jerse}'. And let me 

 say now that these figures represent the animals of these breeds as 

 we have them at the college farm. I do not present them as repre- 



