516 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



If the creamery company hauls it for less than his milk he receives 

 more per pound butter fat than his neighbor who sends whole milk, and 

 then of course his neighbor is the one that kicks, but the result generally 

 is that he also will get a hand separator as he sees that he will get more 

 money out of his cows and by and by there are so many farmers with hand 

 separators that a meeting is called and it is generally decided to take 

 cream only if the hauling of the milk becomes too great an expense, and 

 after that things again run harmoniously. I admit that during this change 

 is the critical noint of the welfare of the creamery. 



I probably have fought the hand separator as hard as any man in the 

 state of Iowa. This was during the six years while I was secretary and 

 manager of one of the largest whole milk plants in the state. I remember 

 about five years ago we had a stockholders meeting as a few of the farm- 

 ers (probably a half .dozen) wanted to buy hand machines. The result was 

 that these few were the only ones who voted for the adoption of admitting 

 hand separator cream, and so were overwhelmingly defeated. I was one 

 of the majority who fought them hard, as I thought then it was but another 

 new fad, but in time I changed my mind. 



The general feeling of the stockholders at this meeting was such that 

 it would have been dangerous for any hand separator agent to have been 

 in reach as he certainly would not have been handled gently. Today 

 these same farmers all have hand machines. The few who wanted hand 

 machines at that time continued to send their milk to our creamery but 

 still felt that they had not been treated fairly, but we paid no attention to 

 them, rather felt jubilant over our success to think that we had compelled 

 them to continue sending milk. 



But in a year or two a certain creamery man thought he saw a good 

 opening for a hand separator creamery in our territory — started one, and 

 of course these parties at once bought hand machines and delivered their 

 cream to him and received good results. And you may bet they were not 

 slow in trying to convince their neighbors of the advantages of the hand 

 separator. This of course compelled us to change front very suddenly and 

 we also accepted hand separated cream and handled it very successfully I 

 think. 



The hauler brought in the cream the same as the milk, poured it into 

 the weighing can where it was weighed and a sample taken. The cream 

 was then allowed to run into the receiving vat which mixed it with the 

 milk and was again separated. Our object in doing this was three fold. 

 First, this method made the least amount of extra work. Second, the aver- 

 age cream ran about 25 per cent test, while we skimmed a 50 per cent 

 cream. This thin cream would have taken too much additional vat room. 

 The third and main reason was that by again skimming it we took out con- 

 siderable of the bad odor it might have attained. The result was that we 

 made as good butter as we did before we handled hand separator cream. 

 The farmers continued to buy more machines and today the plant takes 

 in no whole milk whatever. The hauling of the milk cost all the way from 

 2V 2 to 4 cents per pound butter, while I understand it now costs about iy 2 

 cents or less on an average. Then again the running of a creamery is con- 



