ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 23 I 



for this reason has beem adopted in hundreds, perhapa thousandls, of 

 dairies where comimercial cultures have' been ado.pted in ome. 



The method oti making this natural starter is isimple. There may be 

 vario!us plains, but one) which is satisffactory' enough is as folloiws: A 

 perfectly healthy, cow from a cleanly, well kept dairy is, selected'. After 

 the under part of the body is carefully brushed, and the udder mois- 

 tened with a daanp clo'th, the. first few jets of milk from' the teats are re- 

 jected^ and the rest is, drawn, into isterlized vesBel. This is. then coveredi 

 at once and takem toi the dairy, heated! to a proper tem^perature aaid pass- 

 ed' throuigh a separator. The skim milk thus obtained is again collected 

 in a sterilized' vesse*! carefiuliy covered, and set aside to sour. After it 

 has become properly, isoured it s'erves as a starter for the cream ripening 

 process. Of course there are ma ny other methods' of obtainLng niatural 

 Starters, for a natural starter is nothing 'more than a lot of skim' miiilk or 

 whole milk obtained under especially cleanly condiitions! firoimi an ex- 

 oeptionally good diairy and allowed to siour naturaHly, , '-swi,^ " i 



Of course it is impossible for the dairyman to be sure that such a 

 natural startei? contains the species of bacteria that is wanted for ripen- 

 ing. Sometimes' it m'ay contain proper species and at other times an un- 

 favorable s'peicies. Logically then the us,e of a natural starter is very 

 unsatis'factory. But cnur dairymen are not so much interested in, the 

 logic of the method as they are in practical results, and care not whether 

 the process they use is theoretically the best, provided: it gives them a 

 good quality of butter. There can be no question that the use of nat- 

 ural starters thus miade has bee n a very dlecided ad^rantage to the buti- 

 termaker as it has been adopted! ioi the last ten, ye'ars. If this were not 

 true,, of course we shouldi not expect that this mode of ripening cream 

 would have been so widel'y ad'opted and would have been' so gene,rally;, 

 one might say uni.form;ly, recom,.mended by buttermiaikers., 



We may perhaps adtvantageously ask wihy a natural starter thtus'pre- 

 yared should oom'monly be a good O'ue and produce a desiraible type of 

 fipen,ing when we rememTDer that the milk obtained in this way has oip- 

 portunity for Qontamiination with many kinds, o'f bacteria. The onliy 



