60 ILLINOIS dairymen's ASSOCIATION. 



referred to are recruited by importing cows from other states, a system both 

 expensive and uncertain. 



Kow, if it were generally understood by dairymen that skimmed milk, in 

 good shape for feeding to calves, could be had in such quantities as demand- 

 ed at an equitable price, it would solve the question as to recruiting the dai- 

 ries. I use the words '' equitable price " because a price must be fixed upon 

 the skimmed milk from month to month to make it equitable to those patrons 

 who do not take skimmed milk, and to adjust the difference between those 

 who take a larger or smaller quantity. I might suggest some plans by which 

 this price could be fixed, but will not trespass upon your time to do it. 



While this plan of furnishing skimmed milk would cause some trouble 

 and expense to the factoryman, it is a matter that must be conceded for the 

 good of the dairy interest, but it will react in time to the benefit of the man- 

 ufacturers through a greatly increased patronage of the factory by a class of 

 small dairymen who have felt that they could not spare their milk from the 

 farm while raising calves. 



The supply of skimmed milk should be flexible and varying, according to 

 the demands of the dairymen. This could be easily done by knowing what 

 patrons would want milk and how much. All other milk should be run into 

 lull cream cheese. Then, as the season advanced, and other and cheaper 

 feeds were substituted, the manufacture of part skim and full skim cheese 

 could be undertaken, as the outlook might indicate. By the middle of Aug- 

 ust, with no hard skims in the way, we might look for an active market for 

 a good part skim cheese. 



From present indications I incline to believe that the centrifugal sepa- 

 rator will prove a valuable aid to the skimming process at all seasons. It 

 may present the advantage of furnishing skimmed milk to the farmers in 

 good shape for calf feed, much of it being returned to them on the same day 

 as its delivery to the factory. 



I regard this system of supplying skimmed milk from the factory as the 

 most feasible plan of overcoming the great waste which is liable to occur 

 from either one of two causes, namely, that of making skim cheese at a sea- 

 son when it cannot be sold, except at extremely low prices ; secondly, that of 

 retaining the entire milk on the farm and selhng the cream. 



A little thought will convince an unprejudiced farmer who sells his cream 

 for twelve months in the year that he actually wastes his skimmed milk for 

 at least half of that period. For six months of the year he has no pressing 

 need for it and feeds it to whatever stock will consume it, only because he 

 has it on hand and must dispose of it in some way. When skimmed milk is 

 worth fifty cents per hundred to put into cheese he cannot afford to use it 

 for pork-making with corn at fifty cents per bushel and pork at $4.50 per 

 hundred. 



Any thinking man knows that a bushel of corn will make more pork than 

 a hundred weight of skimmed milk. Hence I am free to say that making 

 skim cheese through the summer and selling cream the year around are both 

 systems of wastage. It is equally true, I think, that whatever inroads have 

 been made upon the territory of butter and cheese factories by the gathered 

 cream system have had their cause in the inability of the stock raiser to get 

 skimmed milk when most urgently needed. Should factorymen recognize 



