DAIRY MANAGEMENT AND PROFITS. 147 



kept in the dairy, with a pencil mark across 51°. 

 The dairy-woman will, after a trial or two, as I know 

 from experience, be only too glad to avail herself of 

 this scientific help. In sultry weather, skim your 

 cream the moment it begins to crack. The dairy- 

 maid should, in fact, be vigilant as the sentinel of a 

 beleaguered town. The cows should, moreover, be 

 milked as near to the dairy as possible, so that the 

 milk can be carried in warm, and sieved straight- 

 way ; otherwise, if it be allowed to cool, there is a 

 loss of cream, and consequently of butter. In the 

 cream, to ensure a good churning of butter, there 

 should be a certain sour element ; to obtain which 

 some dairy-women keep a little of the old cream ; 

 some use rennet ; some, lemon-juice. Where the 

 buttermilk is desired for combination with potatoes, 

 in that most delicious of all slops to those who have 

 learnt to like it early in life, the milk and cream 

 should be churned together. The buttermilk from 

 the cream alone is too oily to drink. 



The milk required to make one pound of butter 

 will make two of cheese. Ordinarily, from three to 

 four gallons of milk will yield a pound of butter. 



Cows after the second, third, and fourth calves, 

 yield best in butter. 



Half an ounce of saltpetre to every six gallons of 

 cream, melted in a cupful of warm water, and mixed 

 with the cream (also at blood-heat), will most effec- 

 tually remove all taste of turnips from the butter : 

 this in the root season is a great advantage, as the 

 swede yields milk and butter ; mangold-wurzel 

 mainly, if not merely, milk. There will be plenty 



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