216 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



cow is grass ; therefore, according to the quality of lier feed, so 

 to a greater or less extent will be her milk. What is most de- 

 sirable in a pasture is a variety of grasses of fine, sweet, nutri- 

 tious quality and a constant succession of growth. It is the 

 noxious weeds, &c., that cows eat, which impart bad flavors, 

 and the sweet, nutritious food eaten which imparts that beauti- 

 fully rick taste peculiar to prime, fresh butter. 



For the fall and winter months, let there be given a liberal 

 allowance of sweet, fine hay, cut before the seed is developed, 

 with a certain allowance of shorts, together with roots. Rye 

 and oats ground together will make more milk than shorts or 

 meal, though the two latter mixed make richer milk. Some 

 butter-makers assert that cream should be kept unil it becomes 

 sour before you churn it or can make good butter from it. 

 From that theory I shall most emphatically differ. For evidence, 

 I will here state a case during our experience in the dairy busi- 

 ness. Our churning for a time was done by water-power, and 

 we frequently would take the milk warm from the cows and 

 churn it (which would usually take about five minutes), and I 

 have yet to find that sweet, delicious flavored butter, from sour 

 cream or any other, that we used to get from that sweet milk ; 

 from which it is evident that the sweeter the cream the sweeter 



the butter made therefrom. 



Miles Avery, Chairman. 



