MILK-PLANT OPERATION. 
COOLING. 
The milk should be thoroughly cooled after heating and holding, 
and in order to assure this it is necessary that the cooler be of suffi- 
cient capacity. When the cooler is not large enough, care must be 
taken to see that the milk does not pass over it too fast, because if it 
does it will not be properly cooled. The milk should also be cooled 
with the least possible agitation. 
Milk may be cooled in the vats, but in that case care should be 
taken not to injure the cream line; to prevent such injury the milk 
should be cooled quickly, with as little agitation as possible. It is 
more satisfactory to have a separate cooler large enough to permit 
quick cooling, so as to increase the capacity of the pasteurizing ap- 
paratus. Temperature recorders may be attached to the cooler in 
order to record the temperatures to which the milk has been 
cooled. 
BOTTLING AND CAPPING. 
As soon as the milk is pasteurized and cooled it should be put im- 
mediately into clean, sterile, cool bottles. The process of bottling 
and capping can be carried on at the same time as the pasteurizing 
process when a continuous-flow system of pasteurizing is used. The 
capacity of the pasteurizing outfit and the bottle filler should there- 
fore be approximately the same, and this should be such that the 
work of pasteurizing and bottling in medium-sized and small plants 
may be done in four or five hours. Then the same set of men can 
be used during the remainder of the day for other work, such as 
receiving and weighing the milk and washing the bottles and cans. 
In small plants where one pasteurizing vat is used, two men can 
dump the milk into the vat as it is received, and as soon as it is 
pasteurized it may be run over the cooler, and the same two men 
can do the filling and capping. 
The bottling should be done by machine. A machine capper 
also is desirable. 
MAN-HOUR REQUIREMENTS FOR BOTTLING MILK BY VARIOUS METHODS. 
A study was made of the labor requirements in filling and capping 
milk at milk plants in several of the larger cities in the United 
States. Figures were obtained for the labor used for the actual 
bottling and filling; they do not include packing of milk in the 
storage room after bottling. Five methods of bottling were con- 
sidered : 
1. The large, automatic, power fillers and cappers, which fill and 
cap the bottles in the case, a full case at a time. (See Fig. 4.) 
2. The smaller rotary type of automatic fillers and cappers, which 
work automatically, but in which the bottles are taken out of the 
cases, and are returned to them after being filled and capped. (See 
Figs. 5 and 6.) 
3. Automatic single-row fillers and cappers in which bottles are 
removed from cases and passed through the machines in rows. (See 
Fig. 7.) 
4. Machine fillers and cappers, in which the bottles are filled and 
capped in the case, but the operations are accomplished by means 
of hand levers and not automatically. 
