144 DOMESTIC ANIMAI^S. 



of the animal, and the milk is orrcatly reduced in quantity, and in like 

 measure improved in quality. Indeed the abnormal heat produced in 

 the udder is of itself sufficient cause for rejecting; the milk for butter- 

 making. In the fall, where the grass begins to fail, and loses its nutri- 

 tive or milk-producing elements, there is nothing that can equal corn- 

 stalks as a substitute. The corn should be sown for the purpose. 



"Daring the winter months the stock should be stabled or otherwise 

 sheltered from the severities of the weather for the night, and while 

 they feed. And the care, and amount and kind of food must be so ap- 

 pointed that they rather improve in condition and vigor than otherwise; 

 at least they must not be allow^ed to run down to poor liesh and weak- 

 ness ; for then no amount of attention and good nursing through the 

 summer will restore them to full milking capacities. The loss is irrep- 

 arable for the season. 



"A very thorough and practical understanding of the next and last 

 branches, ^. e., the treatment of the milk, and the process of butter mak- 

 ing, is much more difficult to obtain, because the knowledge is much more 

 difficult to impart. With all the rules that may be given, there must 

 be superadded, as conditions for their successful application, the neces- 

 sity for close and critical observation. For there are constantly arising 

 circumstances to modify the most of such which may be laid down in a 

 general system. 



"For depositing the milk when strained, the tin pail of the capacity 

 of about twelve quarts is preferable to any other kind of vessel. It is 

 sufficiently largo to fulfill all the requirements in that particular; while 

 its superiority over the shallow pan — which is considerably used — is too 

 palpable to admit of doubt. The following propositions in point, are 

 sustained by facts, the application or pertinency of which, all who have 

 ever made butter, or who have been in a dairy with their eyes open to 

 the every day phenomena therein, Avill readily apprehend, viz. : that 

 milk, in order to realize from it the largest quantity and best quality of 

 butter, must stand in an atmosphere of a given temperature a specific 

 length of time, in all cases, in order to perfect it for the churn ; that 

 natural or artificial causes, either accelerating or retarding the processes 

 of change in its elements from that fixed standard, have their like certain 

 results of deterioration, both in the quality and the quantity of the butter 

 produced ; that a given quantity of milk, with the greatest surface ex- 

 ])osure to the action of the atmosphere, in a given temperature, will 

 change more rapidly than a like quantity in a like temperature, with a 

 less surface exposure. The fiicts in prootj it need scarcely be intimated, 

 condemn the use of the shallow pan. 



"Every dairy-woman has observed the effects of a close, muggy and 

 liumid atmosphere— such as often precedes rain-storms in the summer — 

 upon the milk ; also, of a thun<ler-stonn, also of only partly filling a vessel. 

 In all cases named, the change in the milk is much more rapid than when 

 the temperature of the atmosphere is even, and the equilibrium of its 

 vital elements more perfectly sustained ; and then in pails filled to their 

 capacity. In all these instances too, the milk must be churned sooner. 

 But there is no method that will prevent a loss of product in quantity 

 and quality. 



