116 BOARD OF AaRICULTURB. 



3'ou are familiar with animals of specific butter habit. The large 

 returns of some of your best farm butter makers, and of your best 

 managed creameries settles that point as far as your experience i» 

 concerned. I would urge you to pause and consider well any 

 advice which may be given 3-ou to change the animals which 3'0ii 

 DOW have for others which may disappoint. Prove them at every 

 step before you resort to change, and be very sure that improvement 

 is probable before you start out on the venture. 



Complete your organization for effective work. What you 

 attempt, do well, and try to remember that what is of advantage to 

 one farmer is a gain to the town. 



A few weeks ago a most distressing letter reached me from a 

 New England Creamery superintendent. He was ask'ng what he 

 should do to get more butter from his cream and to maintain its- 

 quality. This was a case of operating a creamery with too few 

 cows, too large a number of them being far advanced in the period 

 of lactation and many of them poorly fed. The business of dairy 

 farming is not unlike all other trades in this respect, it must be 

 operated with ordinary intelligence, and with common business- 

 prudence. The greatest promise of improvement for the immediate 

 future lies in the manufacture of good butter on some uniform plan 

 of action. Nowhere outside of the Creamery or factor}' method 

 are you so likely to realize success. Whatever inequalities are 

 found in farm butter ma}' be more easil}' remedied in the factory 

 where you have to deal with the same conditions every day in the 

 year, and the associated plan is much better suited to raise the general 

 standard of quality. All the best interests of the farmer will be 

 found in supporting the system which costs the least to operate, and 

 returns him the largest net payments on the butter contents of his 

 cream. 



AVliat is the farmers' interest in good butter? No other article 

 raised from the farm makes so little demand on soil fertility as good 

 butter. The better the butter, the greater its value, and the larger 

 will be the income derived from the by products as skim milk and 

 buttermilk. In platform talks such as this, butter-making cannot be 

 taught. That is the work of an instructor on the premises of the 

 maker, where alone he may learn what are the defects of the present 

 system, and what remedies may be needed. An instructor can hardly 

 hope to do any good unless he can spend a day or so at the creamery 

 and if need be make a trip round to some of the patrons to trace 

 out defects of practice in feeding, or in caring for the milk. 



