STABLE LOCATION, CONSTRUCTION AND SANITATION. 



BY H. B. GURLER, TREASURER NATIONAL DAIRY UNION, PROPRIETOR 

 CLOVER DAIRY FARM AUTHOR OF "AMERICAN DAIRYING." 



De Kalb, III 



I believe we are at the beginning of a revolution in the construction of 

 sanitary cow stables. And it is time we realized that the cow stable is a 

 place where human food is prepared. 



It is a burning shame on we dairymen that so much time and money 

 has to be spent by experimenters and manufacturers to devise methods and 

 machinery to cover up or bridge over our faulty work. For it is our faulty 

 work that has made it necessary to pasteurize milk and cream. How many 

 of us could eat a breakfast prepared in the cow stable where the milking is 

 done? There certainly is no article of human food that will absorb more 

 from the surrounding atmosphere than milk, and the other breakfast foods 

 would be much less contaminated than is the milk. Perhaps we might offer 

 the excuse that we were raised -in that way and thought it all right; I cer- 

 tainly can think of no other excuse to offer, and that, one will not be ac- 

 cepted longer by the intelligent public. I have met persons that were so 

 accustomed to the cowy odor and flavor that they were suspicious of milk 

 that did not contain it. This is a little rough on humanity and perhaps 

 should not have been told here. I know of a Chicago doctor telling a lady 

 that he could blindfold her and lead her through a certain cow stable and 

 she would have no suspicion that she was in a cow stable. This shows what 

 it is possible to accomplish. And it is entirely practicable to have our stables 

 in such sanitary condition that the expert will not detect the odor of the 

 stable in the milk. 



To show the susceptibility of milk to contracting odors I will give a 

 little incident in my dairy school work. I was training the class in de- 

 tecting bad flavors in the milk by warming samples to a temperature that 

 would cause a little vapor to rise from it, and passed the warm samples 

 around the class. One of the students detected the flavor of the hog-pen 

 one day, and I also did. This matter was followed to the farm where the 

 milk was produced and we learned that the patron practiced putting his 

 night's milk in an open vat in a room where there was nothing else, thinking 

 he was doing the very best that he could. This room was about 50 feet from 



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