298 SCIENCE AND PRACTICE OF DAIRYING. 



unfavourable. For another thing, more distant markets may be 

 sought. Where butter is prepared, the rearing or fattening of calves 

 or of swine is carried on, or, less frequently, the preparation of 

 skim-milk, when all bye-products, both of the butter and the skim- 

 milk, are utilized for feeding swine. It may be calculated that 

 every four cows keep, on an average, one old and one young pig, 

 and every four to five cows a breeding sow. 



The manufacture of butter may be effected on a small scale as 

 well as on a large scale, but is more lucrative on the latter scale. 

 The prices of the butter market show that butter made in large 

 dairies is, on an average, better than that prepared in small dairies. 

 On small farms it is not convenient to churn every day. 



141. The Utilization of Milk by converting it into Fat Cheese. 

 The fact that the practice of making fatty cheeses is less extensive 

 than the making of butter, is due to the fact that the former method 

 of utilizing milk is largely influenced, as has been pointed out, by 

 certain local conditions, as well as by the fact that the art of cheese- 

 making not merely requires aptitude and care, but involves reflection, 

 skill, and experience. The assertion that the practice of cheese- 

 making prevails in mountainous districts, and in districts thinly 

 populated, because cheese keeps better than butter, is by no means 

 correct. The conditions necessary for the successful manufacture of 

 fat cheeses do not admit of such perfunctory dismissal. Fatty soft 

 cheeses are almost always less easily kept and less in demand than 

 salt butter. Only certain kinds of fat hard cheeses are uncondi- 

 tionally superior to butter in this respect. 



It may be regarded as beyond doubt that the ripening of cheese 

 is effected by bacteria. On the one hand, we know that the different 

 kinds of bacteria exercise different kinds of actions, and, on the other 

 hand, that certain kinds of cheeses are characterized by particular 

 properties. From this it may be inferred that the ripening of each 

 kind of cheese is dominated by a particular kind of bacteria. If 

 this is correct, it follows, further, that each kind of cheese will be 

 most successfully manufactured when the proportion of the kinds of 

 bacteria implicated in the manufacture of the cheese are present in 

 the right quantity. Since milk leaves the cow's udder free from 

 bacteria, it follows that nearly all the bacteria which lodge in it are 

 derived from dirt, which comes into it chiefly from cow dung. The 

 bacterial percentage in dung depends directly on that in the food, 

 and this is influenced indirectly by the manuring and by the different 



