206 TEMPERATURE OF THE BEST DAIRIES. 



Milk as it comes from the cow is about blood-heat, or 

 98° Fah. It should be cooled off as little as possible 

 before coming to rest. With this object in view, the 

 pails may be rinsed with hot water before milking, and 

 the distance from the place of milking to the milk-room 

 should be as short as possible ; but, even with all these 

 precautions, the fall in temperature will be considerable. 



From what has already been said with regard to the 

 manner in which the cream or oily particles of the milk 

 rise to the surface, and the difficulty of rising through a 

 great space, on account of their intimate entanglement 

 with the cheesy and other matters, the importance of 

 using shallow pans must be sufficiently obvious. 



To facilitate and hasten the rising of the butter 

 or oily particles, the importance of keeping the milk- 

 room at a uniform and pretty high temperature will 

 be equally obvious. The greatest density of milk is 

 at or near the temperature of 41° Fah. ; and at this point 

 the butter particles will, of course, rise with the great- 

 est difficulty and slowness, and bring up a far greater 

 amount of cheese particles than under more favorable 

 circumstances. These caseous and watery matters, as 

 has been already stated, cause the cream or the butter 

 to look white, and to ferment and become rancid. To 

 avoid this, the temperature is generally kept, in the best 

 butter-dairies, as high as from 58° to 62°. Some recom- 

 mend keeping the milk at over 70°, and from that to 80°, 

 at which temperature the cream, they say, rises very rap- 

 idly, especially if the depth through which it has to rise 

 is but slight. But that, in the opinion of most practical 

 dairymen, is too high. 



To obtain the greatest amount of cream from a given 

 quantity of milk, the depth in the pan should, it seems 

 to me, never exceed two inches. A high temperature 

 and shallow depth, as they liquefy the milk and facilitat i 



