THE DAIRY FARMER AND CREAMERIES. 115 



stitutes, and none of those who use them will ever be found to 

 patronize creamery or high classed goods. 



Now, what is our great need to-day? Is it not so to change our 

 farming that we may have a regular supply of good, sweet, richly- 

 flavored milk and cream the year round? We tannot have this 

 abundance unless provision is made beforehand for full winter rations 

 of rich, milk-yielding meals and fodders, such as we have been 

 talking about to-day. 



The modern cow of whatever breed she may be, calls for rations 

 containing many rather than few sources of food substances if we 

 would make the most butter of the highest quality from her milk. 

 We may balance her rations very carefully, and gire her a fair pro- 

 portion of succulent food in the form of roots or ensilage, but if the 

 mixture is composed of few substances, the butter will be simple in 

 flavor, and will sell for less than fine gilt edge goods. How do we 

 know this? For the same reason that you know the best butter is 

 made in June. The best butter must be made in winter when animals 

 have had the best and most varied diet. Hence it is that we always 

 think of clover as an ideal food, and regard with suspicions any 

 advise which encourages the use of an undue proportion of corn 

 meal, gluten meal or cotton-seed meal. The danger we must always 

 guard against is satisfaction with the quantity of milk or cream we 

 are producing. It is in this blending of food in winter, no less than 

 in summer that the farmer's skill will best serve him. I look for- 

 ward to the time when butter will be made to order just as we now 

 make flour, chicken meat and wool. 



Another important influence on the quality of cream is the period 

 of lactation and its effect on the milk produced. The condition 

 which will gire us the largest quantity of butter in winter when 

 prices are highest, is the same for improvement in quality. There 

 is still too large a proportion of cows coming in during the early 

 spring and too few in the winter months. The latter half of the 

 period of lactation decreases the quality' of the butter, and if the 

 cow be in calf, as she invariabl}' is, the tendency is still more in 

 that direction. A regular succession of fresh cows throughout the 

 year is the condition most desired, but it is much better that we 

 should be flush in winter than at any other period of the dairy year. 

 As the cows fall off and go dry you will approach a season when 

 feed is flush, and when the evil effects of staleness are least percep- 

 tible. Of the effects of bieed I need not say much because most of 



