ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 181 



THE EFFECT OF NEATNESS IN FARM SURROUND- 

 INGS ON THE QUALITY OF THE BUTTER. 



(Premium of 20 rods of their 58-inch No. 5 Woven Fencing- valued at 

 $11.00, offered by I. L. Elwood M'f 'g-. Co., DeKalb; vron by W. R. Hostetter.) 



On first thought a person would naturally say that the farm 

 surroundings had nothing to do with the quality of the butter, 

 that if the stables were clean inside, that if the dairy utensils 

 and dairy-room were clean and the butter maker neat and clean 

 that the surrounding influences could have no possible effect. 

 But in assuming the above we assume conditions that do not 

 exist. A clean barn with dilapidated doors, rickety fences and 

 filthy barn yard does not exist. 



Neither does a neat and clean butter maker exist where the 

 slops are thrown down by the door and the poor fences allow 

 the chickens, ducks, geese and pigs to eat every blade of grass 

 in the front yard. The fences, the lawn, the trees, the out- 

 buildings have a direct influence on the butter. 



Good and uniform butter can not be made on a farm with 

 poor fences, cows that will occasionally get through fences into 

 grain fields, will worry continually and the best quality of butter 

 can not be made from them. Untidy and dilapidated out- 

 buildings always indicate neglect and there is no neglect without 

 decay, which means bad odors and the breeding of injurious 

 bacteria which fill the air and fall into the milk and infest every 

 nook and crevice. There is nothing will, absorb bad odors and 

 breed bacteria more quickly than milk and the bad effects are 

 seen in the butter. 



We might mention the effect of badly kept barn yards and 

 hog pens upon the wells that are quite a distance from them and 

 how such water will not only make the butter that is washed in 

 it unfit for food but will injure the milk of cows that drink it. 



To more fully illustrate the good effects of neat surroundings 



