1^ Illinois State Dairymen s Association. 



scoring contest. We are not only examining the milk chemi- 

 cally but bacterially and it must have thorough examination all 

 along the line. 



Flavor. The first, in scoring milk, to be considered is 

 flavor and we give forty points on that out of 100, because we 

 consider flavor the most important quality in milk. If milk is 

 not good flavor it is of little value for anything, either as mar- 

 ket milk or making butter or cheese and so in our score cards, 

 like the score cards for butter and cheese, we give flavor a large 

 proportion of the points. I think in your butter score card 

 here you allow 25 points for flavor and in cheese 30 points for 

 flavor, and it is right that flavor should be given that number 

 of points. Of course all clean milk has little flavor; if it is fair- 

 ly rich it may be described as rich and clean, sweet and pleasant 

 but with no distinct flavor, and if you find any flavors in market 

 milk you may be pretty sure they are foreign flavors, and of 

 course we do find flavors of the cow stable, flavors of strong 

 food, flavors of sap powders used in washing the bottles and 

 smothered flavor, due to the milk being closed too tightly when 

 it is warm, and a great many other flavors. If any of you have 

 ever taken a dozen different samples of milk and examined them 

 critically for flavor, you must have been surprised at the great 

 variety of flavors and tastes that you got, but I am very glad 

 to say that the milk and cream exhibited here on the whole was 

 of very good flavor. 



Following flavor, we determine the number of bacteria in 

 the milk and the number of bacteria of course really serve as an 

 indicator. If the number of bacteria run high we know it has 

 been produced in an unsanitary condition, not properly cooled, 

 or too old. We know there is something wrong somewhere along 

 the line, and so we determine the number of bacteria and that 

 gives us a pretty good idea of the way the milk has been handled. 

 If the bacteria do not exceed ten thousand to the cubic centimeter 

 or fifteen drops, we score the milk perfect; and if they 'run to 

 one hundred thousand we consider the milk of fair quality; 

 but at five hundred thousand we do not give anything for bac- 

 teria because milk that contains five hundred thousand bacteria 

 is poison and is not fit for consumption, is strictly dangerous 

 to feed children and infants, and so we make quite a point of this 

 question of bacteria in milk. 



