AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 23 



consumers of milk in our villages and cities have an interest. 

 Milk is an important source, when healthful, of the very best 

 quality of human food, and is so regarded especially by those 

 who have to do with the physical welfare of children. It is evi- 

 dently unfair, however, to pay the same price per quart for all kinds 

 of milk. The food value of a quart of Jersey milk, such as that 

 produced by the Station animals, is worth twenty-five per cent, 

 more for purposes of nutrition, than is the Holstein milk. While 

 it may not be possible to grade the retail price of milk according to 

 its quality, it would be entirely just for the milk man who is selling 

 the product of a Jersey herd to receive a larger price than that 

 which is paid for Holstein or Ayrshire milk. 



This matter of the varying value of milk according to its 

 source is a very important one in the case of those butter facto- 

 ries that are purchasing milk instead of cream. When the man- 

 agements of such factories pay the same price for milk con- 

 taining five and one-half pounds of fat to the hundred, that they 

 do for milk containing three and one-half pounds of fat to the hun- 

 dred, they are either defrauding themselves or doing great injus- 

 tice to the producers of the richer milk. Nothing can be more 

 unbusiness-like than to purchase milk for butter making purposes 

 at a uniform price without regard to quality. Somewhat the 

 same considerations pertain to cream-gathering butter factories. 

 The above table makes it very clear that cream is not of uni- 

 form value and that the individuality of animals has a very 

 marked influence upon the cream that is produced. Taking the 

 average of a two years' record we see that the amount of cream 

 required for a pound of butter has varied from 5.2 pounds, in the 

 case of the Ayrshire, Nancy Avondale, to 3.95 pounds, in the 

 case of the Jersey, Ida. The custom so far in Maine has been 

 to pay the same price for equal volumes of cream, without regard 

 to its source. This may be rank injustice, as the facts 

 show, and is excusable only on the ground that no rapid and accu- 

 rate method exists for testing cream. It is true that until a com- 

 paratively recent date no such method has existed, but now we 

 have several methods that are fairly efficient and their absence 

 can no longer serve as an excuse for underpaying one cream pro- 

 ducer and overpaying another. 



The time has clearly come when the butter factories of Maine 

 should deal justly with their patrons and take steps towards 

 paying for cream according to its butter value. Apart from other 



