28 () On Cheese-making in Home Dairies and in Factories. 
■wife. It is odd that we never hear such questions raised in connection with 
sending milk to cities. These and all other objections, refuted time after 
time, at leng;th disappeared, and a sufBcient number of farmers undertook to 
put up the building and furnish it with plant, taking, in fact, all the cost 
and risk upon themselves. Of the original six, however, two withdrew, and 
the work was begun and completed by the remaining four. 
" Mr. Shirley, of Rewlach, put up the building at his own cost, on his own 
land, and the situation is a good one. Three others have done the remainder, 
and, with Mr. Shirley, form the Managing Committee. The entire cost of the 
concern has been 360Z. In its present form it has capacity for the milk of 300 
cows, though for the present we have had to content ourselves with 230. By 
putting in an additional milk-vat we shall be able to work up the milk of 450 
cows. In order to supplement the storage-room we intend to put in a quantity 
of additional shelving, and the lower curing-room, where the green cheese is 
first placed, is to be furnished with adequate ' turning-shelves.' If properly 
constructed these turners are most important economisers of time and labour, 
while they offer no hindrance to a proper examination of the cheese at the time 
of tiTrning it. The best I have seen are in tiers of three shelves, the ends of 
wh'ch are secured in a strong piece of timber'; which has an axle in the centre 
on which it readily turns. 
" Our factory fairly commenced work on May 15, 1874. From that date 
till the end of the season, in November, we received 817,149 lbs. of milk, from 
which we have made 2419 cheeses, which in their green state, after being 
taken out of press, weighed 81,288 lbs. In the first eight weeks it took an 
average of 10 lbs. 9f ozs. of milk to make one pound of green cheese. I took 
the average of five days in the early part of June, and found then that 
lOlbs.llozs. of milk went to one pound of green cheese. It is therefore evident 
that, since that time, the proportion of casein, &c., in milk had increased to 
the extent of reducing the whole average for the eight weeks 1\ oz. below 
that of the five days in June. The milk continued to yield a greater proportion 
of curd week by week during tlie remainder of the season, until at the close it 
appeared that the green cheese for the w'hole season corresponded, as nearly a3 
possible, to one-tenth the weight of the milk from which it was made. The 
actual average is 1 lb. of cheese to 10 lbs. 0"84 oz., or nearly 4 oz. under the 
gallon, of milk — a gallon weighing 10 lbs. 4 oz. 
" The labour at the factory this season has cost us alxiut 120Z., and we have 
been enabled, by means of it, to dispense with the services of eight dairymaids, 
whose board and wages, in the aggregate, could not well be estimated at a less 
sum than 300Z. Nor is this a hardship on dairymaids, for they are, as a class, 
rapidly disappearing. We also secure a considerable saving in material and 
incidental expenses. I consider that, with the exceptions of wages, salt, and 
rennet skins, our incidental expenses at the factory are no higher than they 
would be in a 40-cow dairy at home. We dispense with one dairymaid at 
each considerable farm; this, however, will eutail extra milking'-on the re- 
mainder of the staff, for generally the dairymaid milks. 
" We have already sold 22 tons of cheese at an average of Al. Os. ^\d. per 
cwt. This is a price which is considerably above what we should have made 
of home-made cheese. We save considerably in being able to sell the factory- 
made cheese at six weeks old, instead of having to keep it on hand for 
periods varying from three to nine months. We also have an important gain 
in the production of more cheese from a given quantity of milk than is done 
in farm-houses. We take no butter from the milk, nor have we gathered 
any fiom the whey during the greater part of the season. Another season 
we intend gathering whey-butter. 
" We allow our contributors to fake the sour whey home in the same cans in 
which they have brought the milk to the factory, and with care in scalding the 
