244 The Guernsey Breed 



and we once had such a lot made. This is unnecessary, however, if 

 one can get in touch with the foreman of a packer's oleo oil plant. 

 He will usually have part barrels on hand, and will be .glad to get 

 his office to sell you a few pounds. If unable to obtain pure white, 

 use lard in making up a sample or two, and then make an estimate 

 of the color of the stock and reckon accordingly. It will be useless 

 to try any other substance for the standard medium. I believe I 

 have tried 'butter and rejected it as too soft and apt to melt and so 

 spoil the shades. I have tried white vaseline, lard and lanoline^ and 

 rejected them as too soft and liable to incorporate so much air in 

 mixing as to make the shade inaccurate. I have used tallows of 

 various kinds and mi.xtures and Iieeswax, and rejected them as too 

 hard and too shiny. Paraffin, stearine, ozokerite and other waxes are 

 too translucent or too variable in the way they crystallize, varying 

 tluis in white lines and so in color. Xo printer will promise inks to 

 be permanent enough to pay. Glass prisms such as doctors use in 

 a beautiful little instrument to measure the redness of blood are not 

 within reach, nor made in orange. 



"Ten cc. per hundredweight of butter is as small a variation as 

 most eyes can detect tone-third ounce of color), so it is no use to 

 vary one way or the other, in making a chan.ge, less than 10 cc. per 

 hundredweight. 



"Salt influences color to the extent of a whole shade or more. 

 Time is a factor in this matter with salted butter. Generallj', between 

 butter 24 hours old and fresh salted butter, a half shade will cover 

 the difference. It is well not to use butter the day of churning for 

 color determination. Working against a dry or poorly soaked churn 

 or worker, overworking, or churning very warm, affects the color of 

 butter greatly by incorporating large amounts of air, or sometimes 

 of buttermilk, and should not be done, as it is in every way harmful. 



"The natural method color measurements made possible some 

 interesting studies along this line, which may be added. In the mid- 

 dle west, the native or Durham mixed cows run up in Tune to about 

 the same color as did the thoroughbred Jerseys at Burchard farm. 

 Shade three or three and one-half, 75 to 85 cc. per hundredweight of 

 white. The same cows in winter go lower than do the Jerseys. 

 Guernsey cows' butter runs as high naturally as No. 6, and is often 

 too highly colored to be accepted by the buyer as without artificial 

 color. Guernsey butter color is of a different quality also, it is old 

 gold rather than orange, with suggestions of lemon and' orange. No 

 breed can compete with them in rich colored cream and milk. This 

 difference continues throughout the year, as natural color gradually 

 declines during the fall and winter; those cows that gave the highest 

 color in summer keep their lead all the year. The color gets t"o its 

 lowest point before another pasture season. 



"Sunshine, ensilage, light and alfalfa hay do much to maintain 

 color in milk and butter. In Colorado sunshine with Colorado feeds, 

 with Jersey and Guernsey cows, it is never necessary to use artificial 

 butter color to obtain attractive butter, 



"The following table of churning experiments by the author in 

 Wisconsin in 1899 and 1900 is of interest along these lines, and I be- 

 lieve the color values shown to be typical of the breeds as a whole: 

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