LIVE STOCK AND DAIRY 97 



Small Cheesemaking. 



Can one who is ignorant of the subject make and sell cheese as 

 profitably from three or four cows on alfalfa as can be made from 

 selling butter fat? What work on cheese making would you recommend? 



It takes an experienced cheese maker to make good cheese, and 

 with cheese there is an added objection in our alfalfa sections due to the 

 difficulty of making good cheese from alfalfa milk, which even experi- 

 enced cheese makers often find difficult. Then too, in making cheese 

 the cost of equipment, etc., for a three-cow dairy would be prohibitive. 

 You had better stay with the butter fat proposition at least until you have 

 a much larger dairy and master the details of cheese making. "Science 

 and Practice of Cheese Making" is a complete treatise on the subject 

 and may be obtained at this office for $1.75. 



Hints on Cream Testing. 



In testing cream with the ordinary four-bottle Babcock hand power 

 tester we have difficulty in keeping the butter fat in the neck of the 

 bottles from getting cold and solidifying during the last whirl of the 

 bottles. This makes the test unreliable and very hard to read. We use 

 a "full" sample of cream, 18 cubic centimeters and 17.5 cubic centimeters 

 of sulphuric acid which we get from the creamery. The acid seems to be 

 strong enough as it works very well in testing milk. I understand there 

 is a way of testing cream by using a "half" sample or 9 c. c. and adding 

 9 c. c. of water. My test bottles are graduated up to 50%. / am getting a 

 9 cubic centimeter pipette but am not sure whether or not that I should 

 use a 9 c. c. pipette with a 50% bottle. 



You cannot expect to get accurate results by measuring the cream 

 either with an 18 cubic centimeter, or a 9 cubic centimeter pipette, 

 because the weight of cream such a pipette delivers varies with the 

 temperature, the richness of the cream and the amount of gas or air 

 the cream may contain. To obtain accurate results the cream should 

 be weighed, using either an 18-gram, or a 9-gram sample as you may 

 prefer. A 9-gram sample may be placed in a bottle graduated for 18 

 grams, 9 cubic centimeters of water added, and the test run in precisely 

 the same way as though 18 grams had been used. The only difference 

 is that the reading must be multiplied by 2. There is nothing to be 

 gained by using a 9-gram sample in a 50%-18-gram bottle. If you wish 

 to use 9 grams instead of 18 grams you can purchase bottles graduated 

 to give the percentage directly on 9 grams. In attempting to keep the 

 fat from solidifying before reading, heat the cups of the tester by means 

 of hot water before placing the test bottles in them ; run the test 

 in a warm room ; make sure the water added during the testing 

 is hot, and that you place the bottles in a warm bath at about 140 

 degrees after taking them from the machine. Some of your trouble is 

 due to the fact that you may be using too much acid. A fixed amount 

 of acid should not be used, 'but rather such an amount as will give you 

 a good clear fat column. The amount that will give you this clear fat 

 column can be judged by the color of the milk and acid just after they 



