272 ANNUAL REPORTi OF THE Off. Doc. 



son who says this, displays his ignorance of the cow's process of 

 digestion. The first great stomach or paunch — occupying nearly half 

 the cow's body — is in effect, a silo. The food is here carried through 

 the first stage of digestion, entirely by the production of acid. No 

 matter whether the food is green or dry, grain or coarse fodder, it is 

 all fermented and produces large quantities of acid. Dry corn fod- 

 der in the cow's paunch evolves much more acid than the same stalks » 

 would have produced put green into the poorest silo. The cow's 

 system burns up and utilizes this acid with ease, for that is what 

 nature intended. 



The feed has an effect on the color of the milk and the resulting 

 cream or butter. Green grass, clover and carrots are well known 

 to give a yellow color to milk and butter. Of the grains, corn and 

 oats probably tend to produce a milk most satisfactory for general 

 household use. On the other hand buckwheat middlings has the 

 most injurious effect. When the first two are fed with good clover 

 hay, the cream is well-colored and has a good consistency. It comes 

 off" the top of the pan in a thick layer and leaves skim milk that is 

 noticeably different in color from the cream. If now the change is 

 made to buckwheat middlings and timothy hay, the cream will be- 

 come thinner and whiter. It will not cohere so that it can be re- 

 moved as a layer, but will need to be dipped out a small amount at 

 a time and one can scarcely tell the cream from the skim milk. Such 

 milk is unsatisfactory to the housewife and it will be impossible to 

 make her believe — what is, however, the fact — that the latter milk 

 contains just as much cream and will make as much butter as the 

 first. 



The feed effects the hardness of the butter, that is, its ability to 

 stand up in hot weather, and also its grain. Corn and oats make 

 a good grained butter, wheat bran and linseed meal, a poor grained, 

 while if buckwheat middlings are fed in large quantities a butter is 

 produced that looks and cuts like lard. Gluten meal rich in fat, 

 makes a soft butter, while cotton-seed meal has the most pronounced 

 effect of all the feeds in making the butter hard. Indeed in the 

 South where cotton-seed is fed largely, the butter-fat is so hard that 

 the churning temperature has to be raised at least five degrees. 



The phase of the question most interesting to the dairyman is, 

 what should be fed to increase the amount of fat in the milk. So 

 far no satisfactory affirmative answer has been given. The present 

 belief of those who have studied the problem most thoroughly is that 

 feed does not affect the richness of the milk, that is, the pounds of 

 butter-fat in each hundred pounds of milk. The present doctrine is 

 that each cow has her own normal richness of milk due to her in- 

 dividuality and her ancestry. This richness varies in different cows; 

 in some it is three pounds of fat per hundred pounds of milk, others 



