70 MODERH DAIRY PRACTICE. 



At other farms the milk-pails are kept in the cow 

 stable. The inadvisability of this method ought to be 

 easily seen by everybody. The air in the stable is seldom 

 so pure that the pails will not be highly infected there. 

 Their cleaning will furthermore always be more or less 

 deficient under these conditions. It is not sufficient that 

 the milk-pails are rinsed and scrubbed each time they 

 have been used ; they must first be rinsed in cold water 

 and then scrubbed with a brush and boiling hot water. 

 By cleaning first with cold water, the milk remaining is 

 removed from the corners and joints; if water above 70 C. 

 is first used, some of the albuminoids of the milk are 

 coagulated and will remain in the corners, from where they 

 later can be removed with difficulty; such coagulated 

 albuminoid substances are of course splendid nutritive 

 substrata for the bacteria. 



The Use of Soda in Cleaning Milk-vessels. In many 

 places it is the custom to use boiling water to which 

 soda has been added, for cleaning the milk-pails. The 

 use of such a caustic is, however, not to be recommended ; 

 it only neutralizes or hides the acid that may be there, for 

 that particular time, but does not expel the causes of the 

 appearance of this acid. Kinsing with water containing 

 soda may, on the contrary, have injurious effects, as even 

 after last treatment with ordinary water some lye may 

 remain in the corners of the pails and make these remains 

 a still better nutritive medium than the moisture remain- 

 ing after rinsing with ordinary water. Soda should there- 

 fore not be used indiscriminately for cleaning dairy uten- 

 sils, but only in case of vessels in which sour whey, etc., 

 has been kept. In using water containing soda the last 



