FOOD EFFECT ON MILK SECRETION. 221 



and wild onions in the pasture, is a source of bad flavor to the milk. Of 

 course the remedy here is to remove the wild garlic and onions. It is claimed 

 that placing a small piece of saltpeter in the milking pail will counteract 

 the odor of the turnips. A peck of onions fed to a cow will impart no more 

 odor to the milk than will a small piece of onion added to the milk. Van- 

 denhoydouch 1 reports a case in which milk of all the cows of a village 

 became bitter, although the cows were healthy. The cows were fed on 

 Swedish turnips which had been washed in foul ditch water. As soon as 

 this was discovered and remedied the milk became all right. Weigmann 

 and Zurn report a case in which the straw used for bedding caused soapy 

 milk. E. Hess, J. Schaffer and H. Lang have observed the effects of glaubers 

 salts 2 on some of the cattle of Switzerland. They fed four cows, increasing 

 from 40 to 60 grains per head daily, and compared the results with common 

 salt. The cows gave signs of disease of the udder, such as bloody milk, 

 caking and catarrh. After four days the milk was again normal, but had 

 a taste similar to a weak solution of glaubers salts. The most striking 

 change in the milk was a decrease in the ability of the casein to be curdled 

 in rennet. The effect of feeding potassium chlorate, according to Bieler, 

 was an increase in the yield of milk at the expense of quality. Cornevin 

 found that pilocarpin increased the sugar from about .65 of a gram to 5.5 

 grams per litre. 



Soxhlet 3 has succeeded in demonstrating that butter made from cows 

 fed oil has a melting point of 10 degrees F. higher than normal butter. 



EFFECT OF WATER. There is a popular notion that the more water 

 that a cow can be induced to take into the system, the more milk she will 

 yield. To prove this, animals were fed silage two periods, with corn fodder 

 between, and succeeding which corn fodder with silage was 

 used. In every case where there had been a decrease in milk flow there 

 had been a decrease in total amount of water taken into the system and 

 in every case where there had been a gain in the milk, there had been an 

 increase in the amount of water taken into the system. Three cows drank 

 for both silage periods 2,182 pounds of water, and both fodder periods 

 2,849 pounds of water, but the silage eaten contained 2,489 pounds of 

 water, so that the total water taken during the silage period was 6,226 

 pounds, while for the fodder period only 5,435 pounds of water. For the 

 silage periods the cows gave 19.07 pounds of milk, and the fodder periods 

 18.51 pounds of milk, showing that during the period in which the greatest 

 quantity of water was taken into the system they gave the most milk in 

 return. It is also shown that as the period of lactation advances the amount 



1 Experiment Station Record, Vol. V., p. 971. 



2 Experiment Station Record. Vol. V., p. 971. 



3 Journal Royal Agricultural Society, Third series, Vol. Ill, p. 655-662. 



