158 Testing Milk and Its Products. 



178. Method of improvihg the quality of milk. 



The quality of the milk produced by a herd can gener- 

 ally be improved by selection and breeding, i. e., by dis- 

 posing of the cows giving poor milk, say below 3 per 

 cent, of fat, and by breeding to a pure-bred bull of a 

 strain that is known to produce rich milk. This method 

 cannot work wonders in a day, or even in a year, but it 

 is the only certain way we have of improving the qual- 

 ity of the milk produced by our cows. 



It may be well in this connection to call attention to 

 the fact that the quality of the milk which a cow pro- 

 duces is only one phase of the question ; the quantity is 

 another, and an equally important one. Much less dis- 

 satisfaction and complaint about low tests among pat- 

 rons of creameries and cheese factories would arise if 

 this fact was more generally kept in mind. A cow giv- 

 ing 3 per cent, milk should not be condemned because 

 her milk does not test 5 per cent.; she may give twice 

 as much milk per day as a 5 per cent cow, and will 

 therefore produce considerably more butter fat. The 

 point whether or not a cow is a persistent milker is also 

 of primary importance ; a production of 300 lbs. of but- 

 ter fat during a whole period of lactation is a rather 

 high dairy standard, but one reached by many herds, 



the Danish co-operative cow-feedinff experiments, conducted during the 

 nineties with over 2,000 cows in all. The conclusion arrived at by the 

 Copenhagen experiment station, under whose direction the experiments 

 have been conducted, is ; that the changes of feed made in the different 

 lots of cows included on the experiments had practically no influence 

 on the chemical composition (the fat content) of the milk produced. In 

 these experiments grain feeds were fed against roots, oil cake, wheat 

 bran or shorts ; grain and oil cake wore furthermore fed against roots, 

 and roots were given as an additional feed to the standard rations 

 tried, — in all case- with practically negative results so far as changes 

 in the fat contents of the milk produced are concerned. 



