THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART IX. 565 



dairy is being enthusiastically promoted by some parties and uncom- 

 promisingly condemned by others. 



There seem to be at least three sides to the question, or three impor- 

 tant interests involved; those of the farmer, the butter maker and the 

 consumer. First. There are farmers who claim that hand separators give 

 them the best possible skim milk to feed to their stock; such skim milk, 

 they say, protects them from the danger of contagious disease being 

 brought to the farm by the creamery skim milk and they also claim that 

 the saving of time required to draw the milk daily to the factory is an 

 important matter with them. 



On the other hand they must invest considerable money, not only in 

 the separator but in some sort of a power to run it, as the necessity of hav- 

 ing something besides man power to run a farm separator is admitted by 

 all dairymen who have attempted to turn the crank themselves. The loss 

 in skimming at the farms where one hundred or more separators take the 

 place of one factory machine is another important item, as is also the di- 

 minished price of the butter which is often of a lower grade than that made 

 by skimming the whole milk at a factory. 



The next group of individuals that feels the effect of this radical 

 change in the creamery industry are the creamery owners and the butter 

 makers? Some of these feel keenly the loss on the quality of 

 butter made from gathered cream. The experience of many factories with 

 farm gravity cream in the past has been such as to cause butter makers to 

 doubt the practicability of making so fine a quality of butter from farm 

 separator cream as they formerly have made from whole milk. 



It will take a long time to overcome this prejudice but we should re- 

 member that gravity cream is not hand separator cream. The standard 

 quality of butter certainly should not be lowered by farm separator cream 

 and when it is skimmed from milk which is twelve or more hours old. 

 condition than that skimmed from milk which is twelve or more hours old. 

 The sooner cream is separated from the milk after milking the better the 

 cream for any purpose and this being true any faults in the butter made 

 from such cream can not be charged to the farm separator. The defects 

 found in gathered cream butter usually arise from improper care of the 

 cream before it is delivered to the factory. These defects develop or are 

 introduced into the cream either by the method of caring for it at the farm 

 or by the way in which it is transported to the creamery. 



In order to get farm cream to the factory in a condition so that it is 

 possible to make an extra quality of butter from it, the farm separator 

 should be placed where there are no barn or other bad odors. It must be 

 thoroughly clean, the bowl and all tinware scalded and put in a clean place 

 out of the reach of dust. Under no circumstances should the separator 

 bowl be left until it has been used a second time before the cleaning is 

 done. The bowl slime and rinsings left in the separator after skimming, 

 begin to sour and decay in a very short time, and if the cleaning is not 

 done immediately after skimming the taints of sour milk are hard to re- 

 move. 



