FEEDING FOR MILK 77- 



mangolds, turnips, rutabagas, carrots or their tops — will not im- 

 part a bad odor or taste to the milk. Turnips, turnip tops and ruta- 

 bagas are excluded from the ration by some milk buyers. A 

 turnip taste, however, is frequently due to germ contamination.. 

 It is not necessary to feed cows in order that they be quiet during, 

 milking; they can soon be habituated to being fed after milking. 

 Indeed, so great is the danger of disseminating germs in the air 

 when cows are fed before or during milking, that it is now recog- 

 nized that when dry fodder is thus fed it is impossible to secure, 

 clean milk. Moreover, when hay is kept in mows open to the cow- 

 barn, it is very difficult to produce clean milk. If feeding is done, 

 at milking time, it should only be moistened grain. 



Of 26 samples of hay examined at the Storrs Experiment 

 Station, it was found that on the average a gram .(quarter tea- 

 spoonful) contained 16,800,000 bacteria. Seventy-two per cent, of 

 these were liquefiers and ten per cent, were spore-forming bacteria.. 

 The latter cannot be killed by boiling in the spore-forming stage and. 

 therefore exist in pasteurized milk and lead to its decomposition. 



The liquefiers cause digestion of the milk and destroy the- 

 casein. The varieties of bacteria in hay, which are very numerous, 

 diminish with storing; the miscellaneous acid bacteria double with, 

 storing in the barn, but the liquefiers diminish one-third. Hay 

 dust is one of the chief sources of germ contamination of milk.. 

 True lactic acid bacteria are not found in hay and therefore it is. 

 not the source of them in milk. Hay should be moistened before. 

 it is fed. 



There are certain pasture plants which are harmful to milk,, 

 and sometimes to human consumers of it. Among these are the 

 following: Poison ivy, lupines, wormwood, poison oak, meadow 

 saffron, Jamestown weed, sorrel, poisonous mushrooms, wild mus- 

 tard, carrot tops, milkweed, sumach, henbane and skunk cabbage.. 



*Bull. 51 Storrs Agric. Exper. Sta. 1908. 



