146 Testing Milk and Its Products. 



174. Method of improving the quality of milk. The qual- 

 ity of the milk produced by a herd can generally be im- 

 proved by selection and breeding, i. e., by disposing of 

 the cows giving poor milk, say below 3 per cent, of fat, 

 and by breeding to pure-bred or high-grade bulls of a 

 strain that is known to produce rich milk. This method 

 cannot work wonders in a day, or even in a year, but it 

 is the only certain way we have to improve the quality 

 of the milk produced by our cows. 



It may be well in this connection to call attention to 

 the fact that the quality of the milk which a cow pro- 

 duces is only one side of the question; the quantity is 

 another, and an equally important one. Much less dissat- 

 isfaction and grumbling about low tests among patrons of 

 creameries and cheese factories would arise if this fact 

 was more generally kept in mind. A cow giving 3 per 

 cent, milk should not be condemned because her milk 

 does not test ,5 per cent. ; she may give twice as much milk 



problems have been considered. Many farmers are firm in their belief 

 that butter fat can be "fed into" the milk of a cow, and would take excep- 

 tion to the conclusion drawn in the preceding. The results of careful in- 

 vestigations by our best dairy authorities point conclusively, however, in 

 the direction stated, and the evidence on this point is overwhelmingly 

 against the opinion that the fat content of the milk can be materially and 

 for any length of time increased by changes in the system of feeding. The 

 most conclusive evidence in this line is perhaps the Danish co-operative 

 cow-feeding experiments, conducted during the past ten years with over 

 2,000 cows in all. The conclusion arrived at by the director of the Copen- 

 hagen experiment station, under whose supervision the experiments have 

 been conducted, has been repeatedly stated in the published reports of the 

 station: that the changes of feed made in the different lots of cows included 

 in the experiments have had practically no influence on the chemical 

 composition (the fat content) of the milk produced. In these experiments 

 grain feeds have been fed against roots, against oil cake, and against wheat 

 bran or shorts; grain and oil cake have furthermore been fed against roots, 

 and roots have been given as an additional feed to the standard rations 

 tried, in all cases with the same negative results so far as changes in the 

 fat contents of the milk produced are concerned. 



