CATTLE. 339 



the general market. It is in this respect that the creamery justly en- 

 joys a great advantage over the private dairyman, by being able to guar- 

 antee a certain amount of uniform quaHty regularl}'. And it is in this 

 way that farmer owning, or only caring to keep a small number of cows, 

 may secure the largest advantage through co-operation in the establish- 

 ment of a creamery. 



Now, let us look at some of the ways in which" the quaHty of farm 

 dairy butter may be easily improved. In the first place the dairy work, 

 and particularly the butter-making, must be a distinct department of the 

 farm work. It must be done at the proper time, regularly and system- 

 atically, and it must be done in a place devoted to it and to nothing else. 

 This need not be a separate building, or even a very large room, but it 

 should be carefully fitted with ventilation and drainage and should be 

 so arranged as to be easily and completely washed out and then quickly 

 and thoroughly dried. It should be large enough to hold the churn and 

 butter-worker and the cream while ripening, for with the use of the sep- 

 arator the milk itself, as we shall see presently, need never go to the 

 dairy room. It should not be necessary to say that scrupulous cleanli- 

 ness is the all-important condition of good butter-making, and we will 

 merely pass it over with the hint that cleanliness is a relative term and 

 may not be nearly so clean as they think. One thing I may perhaps 

 call attention to, and that is the use of steam, not only in removing dirt, 

 but in killing the germs of all those fermentations and putrefactions that 

 cause so much trouble to the butter-maker. Scalding with hot water, 

 particularly as it is usually done, can in no sense take the place of live 

 steam in this respect. 



Attention to a few general principles in regard to the temperatures at 

 which the various steps in the process are carried on will have a great 

 effect on the resulting product, especially so far as the texture of the 

 butter is concerned. These, in brief, are to effect al) necessary changes 

 graduallj', to hold the temperature in the intervals as uniform as possi- 

 ble, and churn at as low a temperature as will bring the butter in a rea- 

 sonable time. 



By far the greatest factor in improving the quality of farm dairy but- 

 ter and in lessening the cost of production is the introduction of the 

 centrifugal separator, which has effected quite as great a revolution in 

 butter- making as the introduction of improved machinery has in grain 

 raising. It is the most efficient method known for removing cream from 

 milk. With the greatest care in a deep-setting system at least three- 



