154 STATE BOARD OP AGRICULTURE. 



CLEANLINESS IN THE STABLE. 



If we are to make good butter the greatest care must be taken that the 

 strictest cleanliness be practiced in all the details of the work from the 

 cow to the butter tub. So the first point I would emphasize is cleanli- 

 ness in the cow stable. The cows should be kept dry and clean so that 

 no particles of dust or pther filth from the cow shall fall into the milk. 

 The milk should be carried from the barn as soon as milked and not 

 allowed to stand and absorb the stable odors. We strain our milk into 

 the cans through two thicknesses of cheese cloth. 



Then care should be exercised in the feeding of the cattle. Musty hay 

 and grain will taint the milk, and certain feeds, such as rutabagas and 

 sometimes silage, give trouble. When roots or silage are fed the pre- 

 caution should be taken to feed them after milking. 



SECURING THE BUTTER FAT. 



The next point that claims our care is that of getting the butter fat or 

 all of the cream as we generally express it, out of the milk. There are 

 three methods of doing this of which I shall speak; first, the old shallow 

 pan system which our grandmothers used; second, the cold deep setting 

 process used by our fathers; and third, the centrifugal separator of the 

 present generation. 



The butter fat which we are after, exists in the milk in the form of very 

 minute globules, so small indeed that if you were to count the globules 

 in a single drop of milk, at tbe rate of one hundred a minute for ten hours 

 a day it would take two weeks to count them. These vary in size, and 

 in the milk in which the globules are the largest and most uniform in size, 

 they rise to the surface most rapidly and the separation is most complete. 



When a cow is fresh the fat globules are largest and they increase in 

 number and decrease in size throughout her milking period. This is why 

 the cream rises so slowly on the milk of strippers and why it takes so long 

 to churn in the fall and winter when the cows have been giving milk a 

 long time. 



Then as the fat globules decrease in size the other solids in the milk 

 increase in amount, making the milk serum in which the globules float 

 thicker and more viscous, thus increasing the difficulty of separation still 

 more. 



Then again there is supposed to be in milk a fibrin similar to the blood 

 fibrin which causes the clotting of blood. This fibrin forms a network of 

 meshes in the milk as it cools and its formation is favored by slow cool- 

 ing and agitation of the milk. As the rise of the fat globules is in a 

 degree hindered by this formation of the network of fibrin the advantage 

 of setting milk where it will cool rapidly and without agitation becomes 

 apparent. 



SET THE MILK SOON AFTER MILKING. 



So the first point to be observed if the cream is to be raised by setting 

 in shallow pans or cold, deep setting, is that the milk should be set as 

 soon as possible after milking in as cool a place as possible. So far as 



