EEPOET OF THE BUREAU OF ANIMAL ESTDUSTEY. 375 



That the character of the disease is such that decomposition sets 

 in before death, and the use of the carcass, or any part of it, for 

 human food is an impossibility. 



That in no event is the disease communicable to human beings. 



ASSOCIATED DAIRYING IN NEW ENGLAND. 



By HERBERT MYRICK, Esq., of Massachusetts. 



For upwards of two hundred years the farmers in the New England 

 and Atlantic States manufactured at their homes all the butter they 

 produced. The labor of making the butter was largely done by the 

 women of the household, and constituted one of tfye chief if not the 

 greatest drudgeries of farm life. Associated dairying made very slow 

 progress at first against the home dairying custom so long established. 

 Creameries, or factories at which whole milk or cream was received 

 from numerous farms, and there made into butter, had been estab- 

 lished in various parts of the country prior to 1870. But in the New 

 England States the first creamery was organized in Hatfield in 1878. 

 Cheese factories had been quite common all through the northeastern 

 portion of the United States, but, except in Vermont, were not very 

 profitable in New England, because the factories could not get a 

 sufficient quantity of milk to run at a profit. Consequently, the 

 creamery was viewed with little favor in New England, and predic- 

 tions of its speedy demise were not few. The first creameries were 

 started on what was called the Fairlamb plan ; that is, the farmers set 

 their milk in the so-called " Fairlamb can " a deep can having a cover 

 attached by a rubber rim to keep out the air. These factories were 

 quite successful, but have since been supplanted by the Cooley sys- 

 tem of cream-gathering butter factories. In addition to the Cooley 

 factories, which constitute over two-thirds of the one hundred and 

 fifty creameries in New England, there are also quite a large number 

 of milk factories run on the separator system so common in many 

 European countries, the Danish-Meister, DeLaval, and Backstrom 

 separators being used. In the separator system the farmers deliver 

 the whole milk at the factory, the cream is extracted by running 

 through centrifugal cream separators, and the skim milk may or 

 may not be carried back to the farm. In the Cooley cream-gath- 

 ering system, however, the milk is set in deep-setting cans submerged 

 in water. The cream-gatherer from the factory visits the farmer's 

 house every day, skims the milk, and leaves the skim milk on the 

 farm to be fed out. Both systems have their strong advocates, but 

 the separator or whole-milk system is so well known that this paper 

 is confined to a description or the cream-gathering butter factories, 

 which, in New England, have made co-operative dairying more suc- 

 cessful than in any other part of the country. 



Instead of seeking for a proprietor to build and operate the factory, 

 the New England dairymen insist on having it managed co-operatively. 

 The company is organized on a co-operative basis, each shareholder 

 (the shares are usually $25) having as many votes as shares, and the 

 number of shares one person can hold is limited, so as to have the stock 

 in the hands of as many farmers as possible. This makes them all in- 

 terested in the success of the creamery. The stockholders elect a 



