MILKING. 79 



doing "detective" work at our creameries, has 

 convinced me that the time between milkings 

 is the greatest cause of this difference. I know 

 that some farmers have been suspected of being 

 dishonest with their milk when in fact they 

 were the reverse of it. Being hard-working 

 men and up at 4 o'clock in the morning to milk 

 and making long days in the field caused the 

 milking to be done as late as 8 o'clock in the 

 evening, thus making the time from morning 

 to night's milking sixteen hours, and the time 

 from night's to morning's milking eight hours. 

 When these conditions exist the morning's 

 milk will contain the largest per cent of fat. 

 In extreme cases the night's milk will be so 

 much poorer in fat than the morning's that it 

 is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that 

 there is something wrong about the night's 

 milk, or at least that was the fact before the 

 introduction of the Babcock test. Now we 

 have light on this sub'ject and many others. 



At the Mississippi Station ("Bulletin 13") it 

 was found that when cows were milked at be- 

 tween 5 :30 and 7 in the morning and between 

 3:30 and 5 in the afternoon it required on an 

 average 18.1 lbs. of the morning's milk and 13.5 

 lbs. of the night's milk to make a pound of 

 butter. In this case the hours of milking made 

 the time from morning to night ten hours and 

 the time from night to morning fourteen hours. 



