4l6 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



can be done under average conditions. I should say that an 

 average man could milk 22 to 28 cows, depending on the breed 

 and the amount of milk they gave. I find that many make tht 

 mistake of thinking that milking the cows is simply putting the 

 machine on and taking it oflf. 



The second point in the advantage is the fact that it does 

 not injure the cow. Frequently the question is asked, Does 

 the machine draw blood? Any milking machine made today 

 will not draw blood, as far as the best of my knowledge and 

 belief goes. You can leave it on the teat as long as you want to 

 and you would never draw blood provided the cow's teat was 

 well in the first place, — assuming a normal cow. That does not 

 mean that it is desirable to leave the machine on after the milk 

 is drawn. The only way it would injure the cow would be the 

 same as if a man sat down to milk by hand and kept fussing 

 with the cow. Pretty soon the cow would be holding up her 

 milk. But so far as doing anything that a veterinarian would 

 discover was not right, the machine would not do this. 



Another point is the matter of clean milk. I attended -last 

 June the annual meeting of the Certified Milk Producers Asso- 

 ciation of America held in Boston. The secretary of the asso- 

 ciation gave a talk about producing certified milk with milking 

 machines. He gave the record of one certified milk farm that 

 had taken 182 bacterial counts of the milk between Oct. 5 and 

 June I. The samples were not taken at the farm. The milk 

 was shipped to New York and bottled and distributed with 

 teams in Brooklyn and the samples were taken from the bottles 

 in Brooklyn ; and the average of the 182 counts was 2900 

 bacteria. In no case was there over 10,000. I presume that is 

 responsible more than anything else for the fact that there are 

 a number of certified milk farms using our machines. The 

 Borden's Condensed Milk Company on their own certified milk 

 farm are using milking machines, and that is true of the Shef- 

 field Farm. 



The fourth advantage is the independence one gets. I do not 

 suppose there is a man here, if he runs his own farm and has 

 to do it with hired labor, but has at one time or another been 

 extremely tried if he has told a man for a number of times to 

 do something in a certain way and he has not done it. When 

 you recall that back there in the barn you have 20 or 30 or 40 



