Testing Milk and Its Products* 



INTRODUCTION. 



The need of a rapid, accurate and inexpensive method 

 of determining the amount of butter fat in milk and other 

 dairy products became more and more apparent, in this 

 country and abroad, with the progress of the dairy in- 

 dustry, and especially with the growth of the factory 

 system of butter- and cheese making during the last few 

 decades. So long as each farmer made his own butter 

 and sold it to private customers or at the village grocery, 

 it was not a matter of much importance to others whether 

 the milk produced by his cows was rich or poor. But 

 as creameries and cheese factories multiplied, and farm- 

 ers in the dairy sections of our country became to a 

 large extent patrons of one or the other of these, a sys- 

 tem of equitable payment for the milk or cream delivered 

 became a vital question. 



I. The creameries in existence in this country up to 

 within fifteen years were nearly all conducted on the 

 cream-gathering plan: the different patrons creamed 

 their milk by the gravity process, and the cream was 

 hauled to the creamery, usually twice or three times a 

 week, where it was then ripened and churned. The 

 patrons were paid periwc^of cream furnished 5 a creamery 

 inch is a quantity of cream which fills a can twelve inches 

 1 



