212 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 



cream from 70 to 75 degrees the morning before I wish to 

 churn and put in mj starter. Then in the evening if my cream 

 is commencing to sour, I add enough of cold cream from the 

 evening's skimming to cool it down to 70, or if the weather is 

 quite warm, cool it to 65. In the morning the cream will be 

 in the proper condition to churn, thick but smooth, so that it 

 will run through the cream strainer readily. In almost every 

 case the cream will also be the proper temperature for churn- 

 ing. In warming the cream it is better to have it a little abore 

 than below the temperature you wish to churn, as it is easier to 

 cool a vat of warm sour cream a few degrees than it is to 

 warm it, and less danger of injury to the butter. But by using 

 Boyd's cream vat for holding cream a thermometer and a little 

 judgment in regard to weather, the variation in temperature 

 of cream will vary but little from day to day. 



I make my own starter from skim milk and have more 

 trouble to have it right every time than I do my cream. This 

 comes from the fact that the quantity is small and it is difficult 

 to hold it at the proper temperature. If a dairy room could be 

 held at a uniform temperature we could make rules that would 

 not vary once in a thousand times. In our dairy building we 

 as a rule only have fire morning and evening, and unless it is 

 below the freezing point seldom have fire in the room where 

 cream vat is kept. So the necessity of judgment in regard 

 to weather. We churn our cream about fourteen hours after 

 the last cream is put in the vat or about twenty-four after we 

 put in starter or commence to ripen it. We start churn with 

 the cream at least 65 and often churn at 70. I am speaking 

 of winter butter-making and must add that the cream is raised 

 in Cooley cans and in skimming the gauge is set so that an 

 inch of milk is left in the cream, and also that if we have 

 not enough milk to fill a Cooley can at least one-third full, it 

 is put into the cream vat. If the cream was taken with little 

 or no milk in it, we do not think churning at this tempera- 

 ture would prove satisfactory. We use a hundred and fifty 

 gallon churn and run it at a speed of 45 revolutions per minute. 

 The average time of churning is one hour. As soon as the 

 butter comes so that the glass will show partially clear with 

 little granules of butter on it, we stop the churn and put 

 four or five pounds of salt into it; that is, to an average 



