394 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



^liss Inez Jackson, followed with two splendid readings^ 

 and responded to several encores. Miss Jackson's readings were 

 one of the extremely pleasant featurs of the convention, and she 

 proved a great favorite with the members prsent. 



The Chairman : It is getting late bnt we have one or 

 two interesting papers yet and the next on the program is a man 

 that does not need any introduction to the Iowa buttermakers, 

 I will simply announce that Professor G. L. McKay, of Ames,, 

 is the next speaker on our program. 



ADDRESS. 



PROF. G. L. MCKAY, AMES. 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am always pleased to meet 

 with an Iowa audience. The hour is so late that I will not attempt a 

 speech here tonight; you have had so much talking already I do not 

 think it necessary for me to give a long speech. I had a speech 

 prepared for the evening but so many other people have gone over the 

 ground that I will take up another subject. 



I have been the past two days scoring the butter, which is one of 

 the principal things that our buttermakers are interested in, the 

 final results. Scoring butter is not an easy task. In the first place 

 the judge scores the butter; he depends on the sense of smell and taste. 

 There are not many butter judges; all the men who judge butter get 

 themselves familiar with certain flavors. In the 219 tubs that have 

 been scored here, possibly I had 219 different flavors. It is hard to- 

 find two tubs alike in the entire lot. That is due largely to the fact 

 that the flavor of butter is largely a product of fermentation. There are 

 certain standards that are recognized the world over in butter, a 

 pleasant smell, a sweet taste, or in other words the butter that will 

 Btilt the market here will suit the market in England or in Denmark. 



Possibly the only fault I have with the American system of scoring 

 butter is that we set our standard too high. We are in the habit of 

 scoring butter 97, 98, 9Si/^ and sometimes 99 and we do not leave 

 enough margin for the man to work up to. In Denmark the system 

 is to score, using the score of 15 as perfection. I was there d-iring 

 one of their scorings and the highest score that was given at that 

 time was 12 1-2, which would be equal to 75 under our present method 

 of scoring butter. 1 did score one tub of butter here 73 and I expect 

 that man will score me. 



The average of our butter at this time of the year is not as high 

 as we would find it in June or under natural grass conditions. The rea- 



