DAIRY, SEED IMPROVEMENT, STOCK BREEDERS MEETINGS. 21 3 



conditions and then sell it? Is it dangerous? Sometimes it is 

 necessary to keep it, but is it right to sell it? 



Dr. North : We discussed at great length this question of 

 age, as to whether a date means anything, and the opinion of 

 milk experts at our convention seems to be that the date is 

 meaningless, if you put a date on a bottle or can, because the 

 whole question is, what was that milk in the first place? Milk 

 a week old, kept under proper conditions, may be better than 

 milk an hour old. 



Mr. Bradford: Several years ago I put forth the idea at 

 one of these meetings that the notion of putting the milk in 

 cold water, with the idea of getting the animal heat out of it, 

 was nonsense; I could not see any difference between animal 

 heat and any other heat, and I could not see how the heat was 

 coming out of the little neck of a can. That was a curious 

 idea; I guess it is pretty well understood now, that the proper 

 thing to do is to close the can and set it into cold water. We 

 try to sterilize our cans pretty well, and I asked our man this 

 morning what counts he had found. He takes a can and some 

 sterilized water and washes it out and tests it for bacteria, and 

 he tries to know as nearly as possible how many bacteria are 

 in that can. He told me it counted but one bacteria in a cubic 

 centimeter. That is a pretty small percentage, or even when 

 there are several of them. My idea is to put a cover on the 

 can, and tell the farmer to leave the cover on until he gets ready 

 to use it. I am going to advise them to leave it on until ready 

 to fill ; then take the cover off, fill and put the cover on as soon 

 as possible. This is something we have not done yet. 



Question : What about that can and the odor, if kept in a 

 warm place? 



Answer : We use a small rubber ring, and I think that is 

 what causes the odor, mainly, that we get ; and that odor, when 

 we pour the milk into the can, will come out; if there is any 

 bacteria in the odor, it won't hurt anything. I have tried by 

 experimenting to see if I could taste that rubber odor in the 

 milk, but never found that it did any harm. 



Question : The New York contractors sterilize the cans by 

 steam, and then dry them by a blast of dry hot air and put the 

 cover on. The farmer is told to keep the cover on until the 

 milk is poured in. 



