656 



DAIRY FACTORIES 



butter-maker, and the product is a good article 

 of even quality all through ; it is made in suffi- 

 cient quantity for shipment and sale under the 

 best conditions, and hence it commands a higher 

 price than the best ordinary farm-dairy butter. It 

 is made with the best apparatus, is packed and 

 shipped in cold-storage or refrigerator cars, and 

 reaches the domestic consumer within a week, after 

 it is made ; and the foreign purchaser may have it 

 upon his table within two weeks of the churning 

 in the creamery, more than 4000 miles distant. 

 These are advantages which the solitary butter- 

 maker cannot secure ; hence he can only get the 

 creamery price by securing special customers near 

 his dairy. A few so-called fancy dairies are able 

 to secure 40, 50, or even 75 cents ( Is. 8d. to 3s. ) 

 per pound for their butter, but even the best 

 ordinary farm -dairy butter sells at a lower price 

 than creamery butter, and fully three-fourths of it 

 sells for less than half the price of the other. 



American creamery butter is made by the deep 

 setting system, borrowed from the Swedish method, 

 and improved by American ingenuity. The milk 

 is strained from the pail into cans 9 inches in 

 diameter and 20 inches deep. These are set in 

 tanks of water cooled by ice to 45. At the end of 

 twelve to twenty-four hours the cream has separ- 

 ated, and the milk is drawn off by a tap in the 

 bottom of the can, view being given by a strip of 

 glass let into the side of the can. The cream is 

 then drawn off by itself. For the use of the 

 creamery the quantity of cream is measured by the 

 inch, and is paid for on the basis of so many inches 

 to the pound of butter. One hundred and thirteen 

 cubic inches of cream is taken as the standard in 

 this respect. The creamery gathers the cream once 

 a day, and secures it perfectly sweet, while the 

 skim-milk is klso left sweet for the feeding of 

 calves, for sale for consumption, or for the making 

 of pork. The cream is kept until it is slightly acid 

 before it is churned, making thus a quality of 

 butter which keeps better and longer than that 

 made from sweet cream. The churns most popular 

 are those without any dash, being a cubical box 

 turning on an axis passing through diagonal corners ; 

 or a barrel turning on an axis passing through its 

 centre sidewise ; or an oblong square box oscillat- 

 ing endwise in swinging supports. The action of 

 churning thus consists of a dashing of the cream 

 violently against the sides or ends of the churn, 

 and, by concussion, causing the globules. of fat in 

 the cream to adhere together, and gradually 

 coalesce and form small grains of butter. W'hen 

 these grains are as large as wheat-grains, or peas 

 at the largest, the buttermilk is drawn off, cold 

 water or weak brine is poured into the churn, and 

 the churn is moved gently, to agitate and wash the 

 butter. When the butter has been completely freed 

 from milk, and no longer clouds the water, it is 

 drained, and salted with finely-ground pure salt, at 

 the rate of from oz. to 1 oz. to the pound of butter. 

 The salt is easily incorporated with the small grains 

 of butter, and after a rest of a few hours for the salt 

 to absorb the excess of moisture from the butter 

 and become completely dissolved, a butter-worker 

 is used to press the butter, make it solid and even 

 in texture, and as dry as possible. It is then packed 

 in new spruce or oak tubs, or pails, of 20 to 50 lb., 

 for domestic sale, or in 100-lb. firkins for export. 



The dairy interest has reached vast proportions 

 in America and Canada. At least 1,500,000 

 farms, with 10,000,000 cows and 100,000,000 acres 

 of land, are devoted more or less closely to the 

 various branches of the industry. In the most 

 populous of the states, where the dairy is the 

 principal agricultural employment, good dairy 

 farms are valued at $100 (20) per acre and up- 

 wards, as the buildings may be more valuable than 



the average. The land held to be most suitable fo 

 the dairy is a rich limestone loam or gravel, that is 

 productive of the best variety of grasses, especially 

 the so-called blue grass (Poa pratensis), which 

 affords the best pasturage. The best dairy districts 

 are in the states of Vermont, New York, Penn- 

 sylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and the 

 province of Ontario, in Canada. 



The cows mostly kept upon dairy farms are the 

 Dutch or North Holland, commonly called Holstein 

 or Holstein -Friesian, Shorthorns, Ayrshire, the 

 half or higher bred grades of these, and the 

 common ' native ' cows, the descendants of the 

 promiscuous mixture of the various races of cattle 

 brought into America. The most popular of these 

 is the grade shorthorn, which may be purchased 

 when in fresh milk ; the Dutch cow is next in 

 popular estimation, but it is scarce and high-priced, 

 and is much less used. The average yield or these 

 cows varies from 6000 to 8000 lb. of milk per year, 

 or between calves, where calves are bred ; the 

 largest yield of the shorthorn and its grades 

 averages 50 lb. daily, that of the Dutch cows is 

 somewhat greater, and a few of the best have a 

 record of more than 24,000 lb. of milk between 

 calves and within a year. These cows can be kept 

 with profit only upon high feeding and the best of 

 pasture. For the butter-dairy the Jersey breed 

 and its grades are the most profitable, and Ameri- 

 can pastures are now quite thickly sprinkled with 

 the Jersey colours. Ayrshires come next, and the 

 Devon follows in favour ; but of necessity the 

 common native and much cheaper cow forms the 

 rank and file of the dairy herds. 



In America the whole of the work of caring for 

 the cows, feeding and milking them, is done by men. 

 The feeding consists of pasturing wholly; pasturing 

 with partial soiling, or full soiling in the summer ; 

 and feeding upon hay and meals of various kinds 

 with pulped roots or silage in the winter. A large 

 number of dairies are devoted to making butter in 

 the winter, by which a higher price is obtained for 

 the product, and leisure is secured in the summer for 

 the growth of the feeding crops for use in the winter. 

 With the rapid rise in the value of farms suited to 

 the dairy, pasturing is found to be too costly for the 

 largest profit, and partial soiling is almost univer- 

 sally resorted to. Complete soiling, by which one 

 cow may be kept on the product of one acre of land 

 all the year, is practised in some of the best of the 

 fine-butter dairies, where land is worth $200 per 

 acre or more, and where pure-bred Jersey, Guern- 

 sey, or Ayrshire cows of high value are kept, a 

 yield of 12 to 14 lb. of butter per week being 

 obtained by the high feeding of these cows. One 

 of these cows, a Jersey, recently produced 49 lb. of 

 butter in a week, under a forced test, while from 

 14 lb. to 24 lb. of butter weekly has been given by 

 more than 100 Jersey cows now living. This, how- 

 ever, is an example of what is known as fancy dairy- 

 ing, which is closely connected with breeding cows 

 for sale at high prices. In a good working dairy a 

 cow is required to yield 7 to 10 lb. of butter weekly 

 in the height of the season, and at least 200 to 

 250 lb. in the season. 



The average feeding of a dairy cow in the sum- 

 mer consists of the best pasture that can be afforded, 

 with some fresh green fodder as soon as the great 

 heat of the summer hardens the grass, and from 

 2 to 12 quarts of ground feed ground corn and 

 oats, bran, cotton-seed meal, or linseed meal. A 

 very common method of feeding is to give 2 or 3 

 quarts of mixed corn meal and bran, with a 

 quart of cotton-seed meal at each milking time, 

 the cows generally being brought to the barn to 

 be milked. In winter, hay of clover and timothy 

 grass mixed, with the same quantity above men- 

 tioned of meal and a peck of brewers' grains, is 



