764 Popular Editions of Station Bulletins of the 



sanitary quality of milk arose, careful studies of the effect of various 

 barn and milk-house conditions and of the various operations 

 involved in getting milk from the cow to the consumer had not been 

 made. Several of these recommendations or requirements, when 

 tested at this Station and measured by their actual effect on the 

 germs in the milk, prove of surprisingly little or no value. To 

 secure some of the conditions in question, or to perform the opera- 

 tions involved, requires considerable expenditure of money or time; 

 and proof that these conditions or operations are useless in improv- 

 ing the sanitary quality of the milk should result in the abandon- 

 ment of demands for them by milk dealers and sanitary inspectors 

 and remove them from dairy scorecards or greatly lessen their weight 

 thereon. The milk producer can then devote to more profitable 

 uses the money and time expended on these unessential refinements. 



The tests discussed in this bulletin were made in the cattle barn 

 of this Station, in which milk of good sanitary quality has been 

 quite easily produced in recent years. The conditions are prob- 

 ably better than those in most farm-dairy stables, though there is 

 no considerable difference between our stable and its equipment 

 and those of other dairymen in the vicinity and throughout the 

 State who are producing milk of the better grades. Whether the 

 changes in the stable and its management, found without value 

 here, would be equally valueless in stables of lower grade could only 

 be determined by actual test, but in stables of such character other 

 fundamental improvements should first be made if sanitary milk is 

 to be produced; which would bring these stables out of the lower 

 class. 



The dairy operations found in our tests to have no value in keep- 

 ing down germ content of milk were: (1) Ceiling the stable with 

 lath and cement, and white-washing the interior and painting the 

 woodwork; so that it may be said that the cleanliness of the interior 

 of the stable, within a fairly wide range, had no measurable effect 

 upon the milk. (2) Clipping the udder, flank and adjoining portions 

 of the cow led to a slight increase in the germ content of the milk 

 when the cow was cleaned either by hand or with a vacuum cleaning 

 machine. (3) Cleaning the cows with a vacuum cleaner, at 

 the rate of one cow per minute, resulted in practically the 

 same germ content of the milk as cleaning with a brush and 

 comb at the rate of two cows per minute. 



Study of some of the points here discussed 



Conditions began about five years ago and each test was 



of the tests continued long enough to obtain accurate results 



independent of accidental variations. In all 



the tests, small-top pails were used. In each case where only one 



cow was milked into a pail, the pail was thoroughly cleansed and 



sterilized in the dairy room about twenty rods from the barn and was 



