76 STERILIZING 
over his milk cans. By having two such pieces 
they can both be washed and sterilized in the 
morning, giving him one cloth for the night’s 
milking and the other for the following morning’s 
milking. The advantage of washing and sterilizing 
both cloths in the morning is that the majority 
of dairy farmers find it inconvenient to do wash- 
ing and sterilizing in the evening. 
They should first be washed in a basin of cold 
water and alkali powder. Next they should be 
rinsed in clean cold water to get rid of the excess 
alkali. After this they must be boiled on the 
kitchen stove for at least thirty minutes in order 
to kill the bacteria, some of which have exceed- 
ingly hard shells, and are not killed by ordinary 
scalding. The cloths must then be hung up to 
dry in a clean place. Out of doors on a line 
over green grass in the sunlight is an ideal place 
for drying strainer cloths. In the winter time a 
line behind the kitchen stove is satisfactory if 
the room does not contain much dust. Farmers 
often fail to properly clean and sterilize filter 
cloths after the night’s milking. As a result, 
night’s milk may contain few bacteria, while 
morning’s milk after passing through the unster- 
ilized filter, contains many millions. 
