The Milk Utensils 365 



material. These organisms survive readily in the moist 

 crevices of improperly cleaned milk pails and are ready 

 to multiply rapidly when fresh milk is poured into them. 



It is quite certain that the so-called "milk faults," 

 or " milk diseases/' that occasionally prevail in dairies, 

 may be traced directly to the survival of undesirable 

 species in milk pails or other utensils. It is suggested, 

 therefore, that in all sanitary dairies the milk pails, 

 cans, and strainers be washed first with lukewarm 

 water to avoid coagulating the albuminoid substances, 

 thoroughly scrubbed with a good stiff brush, and then 

 exposed to live steam. Such treatment will permit of 

 very satisfactory cleansing, and the effective elimination 

 of various germs. 



Milking-machines. With the introduction of the 

 milking-machine, it was expected that the closed ves- 

 sels employed would permit the reduction of the number 

 of bacteria in the freshly drawn milk. However, the 

 comparative studies made by Stocking on machine- 

 drawn and hand-drawn milk showed these expectations 

 to be unjustified when no more than ordinary care was 

 taken to clean the milking-machines. In one series of 

 experiments, carried out in a dairy of average grade, the 

 machine-drawn milk contained, on the average, 2,790,100 

 bacteria per cubic centimeter, while the hand-drawn 

 milk contained, under the same conditions, an average 

 of only 768,382 bacteria per cubic centimeter. Similar 

 experiments in a high-grade dairy showed the machine- 

 drawn milk to contain 172,958 bacteria per cubic centi- 

 meter, and the hand-drawn milk only 9,400 bacteria 

 per cubic centimeter. 



