BUTTER SCORING 465 



he must be conscientious, careful and able to decide for himself 

 and, after deciding, to stand by his convictions. 



When more than one judge does the scoring, as is generally 

 the case at educational butter scoring contests and county, state 

 and national fairs, also in scoring experimental butter, each judge 

 should work entirely independent of the other judges, there 

 should be no expression of opinion, no comparison of notes, while 

 the scoring is in progress and until each of the judges has com- 

 pleted his work, otherwise the personal judgment of the individ- 

 ual judge is jeopardized and is liable to be materially, though 

 unknowingly, influenced, and this occurs usually to the detri- 

 ment of the accuracy and fairness of the final score. After each 

 judge has completed his scoring, then the judges may compare 

 notes and rescore, for their own satisfaction, packages on which 

 the scores of the different judges show considerable diversion. 

 The average of the individually determined scores of the several 

 judges promises results of maximum accuracy, a'nd freedom from 

 disturbing influences, of the final score awarded to each package. 



The Value of Educational Butter Scoring Contests. With 

 due allowance to the actual service these contests are often capa- 

 ble of rendering, the judge through his criticisms giving the but- 

 termaker valuable information that makes for improvement, it 

 must be admitted that the lasting results of educational butter- 

 scoring contests and the concrete usable information they offer, 

 are often very meager and in a great many cases they do not 

 justify the expense incurred. There are many reasons for this. 



The average butter judge is not a practical buttermaker. 

 He lacks the full knowledge of the real problems which confront 

 the buttermaker and he therefore falls short in his appreciation 

 of the significance of these problems. In fact, even assuming 

 that he is a capable judge of butter, which is by no means always 

 the case, he has very little to offer to and a great deal to learn 

 from the man whose butter he is scoring. Some of the informa- 

 tion which he endeavors to convey to the buttermaker through 

 his letter of criticisms is either not well founded or does not 

 apply, and much of the remainder of the information given 

 has long been a part of the buttermaker's knowledge , but 

 local conditions, lack of sufficient energy, or other conditions, 



