ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 165 



a hook with the patron's name and number and a sample case to 

 hold enough bottles to have one for each patron. These bottles 

 should be the heavy one by five inch tubes in place of the long 

 nine inch tubes so frequently used. They hold more and are 

 easier to fill and empty. 



Make regular trips. Call on all the patrons, except when 

 they have told you they would churn. Never fail to call for the 

 cream because the patron has a small amount and thinks he can 

 hold it until the next time. One gallon of off flavored cream will 

 spoil several gallons. 



Weigh all of the patrons cream in your own pail. 



Do not take out the sample for testing until you have weigh- 

 ed and thoroughly mixed the cream. Fill sample bottle. 



Be sure your sample bottles are not mixed and that each pat- 

 ron is credited with the correct amount of cream. 



Start early and do not stop longer than necessary. 



One of the essential things that a man in charge of a hand 

 separator creamery should know thoroughly is the butter fat 

 determination or cream testing. This is often the cause of a 

 great deal of trouble, especially in neighborhoods where the farm- 

 ers have not the confidence in the buttermaker and where unfair 

 competition has been practiced. No one is free from mistakes, 

 but mistakes are more apt to occur when the work is done care- 

 lessly. 



The system of testing cream every time it is delivered is prob- 

 ably the most satisfactory if plenty of time is taken, but when a 

 man has to crowd in fifty to one hundred samples a clay after th<? 

 other work is done he cannot give it the time it requires. 



I would prefer to see a system for determining the total 

 amount of butter fat delivered by a patron for a week or fifteen 

 days by the use of the composite sample. In that case only one 

 fat determination would be made instead of four or several. A 

 number of farmers cannot understand why their cream varies 

 from day to day. They do not consider that there are various 

 causes for variation in test of cream ; such as changing the speed 

 of the bowl, temperature not always the same ,more milk going 



