Vermont Dairymen's Association. 14? 



trouble for the poor butter maliicr, yet his hands are tied and he 

 is powerless to correct these slovenly practices which antedate 

 the arrival of the cream at the factory. The conditions which en- 

 able the butter maker to do his best are those which insure most 

 to the milk maker, and the plea for the butter maker is backed 

 by the desire for a fat pocket book on the part of the producer. 



It is an easy matter to criticise the butter maker for poor re- 

 turns, but it is wise sometimes to scrutinize the tie-ups, methods 

 of care, utensils used and sanitary conditions of the barn and milk 

 room. Unless the individual cows in the dairy herds are steadily, 

 if slowly, increasing- in output and quality of product, breeding is 

 a failure, and, under conditions growing more exacting yearly, 

 the helps and hindrances all along the line call for increasing 

 watchfulness and direct oversight. A man stood watching the 

 test of a new binder, the bundles being opened and run over and 

 over again until he asked how many times it might miss and be 

 called passable. "It must bind loo sheaves out of loo, no missing 

 at all is permissible," was the reply. Here is the exactness of 

 machinery and towards it the steps of every producer must be 

 turned. That in some ways we cannot maintain this exactness in 

 no sense relieves from the conditions which confront the toiler 

 everywhere. 



Necessity knows no compromise with filth and admits of no 

 excuse for neglect. Competition has fixed the standard of the 

 product and the slightest variation with a single patron injures 

 the standing of the whole. Criticisms fall not on the great major- 

 ity who observe and give sharp attention to details, but upon the 

 few who fail to meet the requirements. If there is a single patron 

 connected with any factory, whose tie-up is dark and close and 

 whose habits are easy, his milk or cream is a constant menace 

 t(> the entire output of that factory. No plea for the butter maker 

 can be complete which does not lift from his shoulders the 

 responsibilities of the cream producer. 



In the steps dictated by cleanliness, the milk pail becomes 

 an important factor and the adoption of the so-called Curler pail, 

 or one similar, which provides for milking through absorbent 

 cotton, a step not to be neglected. It is in no sense a lazy, or shift- 

 less man's utensil, but in the hands of the careful dairyman one 

 of great value and assistance. 



The study of biology opens a wonderful field for investiga- 

 tion and out of this there comes a better knowledge of those in- 

 finitesimal organisms, friendly and otherwise, which multiply so 

 rapidly and make or mar the value of the product. With this 

 there comes a better appreciation of the causes for rapid changes 

 in milk and the increased necessity for absolute cleanliness of all 

 utensils used by the dairyman, the thorough scalding of the same 



