850 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Juxy, 
What Constitutes Good Milk 1 
The quality of milk is a matter which con- 
cerns not only the consumer of the liquid as 
milk, but also those who make butter and clieese 
from it. Much has been said of late years con- 
cerning the reliability of the usual tests for the 
quality of milk, and the lactometer has been dis- 
carded by many as quite unreliable. Doct. 
Voelcker, cliemist to the Royal Agricultural So- 
ciety of Eni:iand, lias recently published, in the 
Popular Science Review, a paper upon " Milk 
and its Adulteration," in which he shows that 
for the purpose of detecting any amount of 
adulteration that would be profitable, the old 
method of testing is satisfactory. The article 
referred to comes from such high authority, and 
is withal so interesting, that we wish we were 
able to give it entire, but we must be content 
with making rather copious extracts. 
" A variety of conditions affect materially the 
quantity and quality of milk. . . .Tims the sea- 
son of the year and tlie amount and kind of 
food given to cows influence the yield and 
quality of their milk; again, the race or breed 
and size of the animal to a great e.xteut affect 
the yield and quality of milk. 
"Generally speaking, small races, or small 
individuals of the larger races, give the richest 
milk from the same kind of food. Where good 
quality is the main object, Alderneys or Guern- 
seys unqucslionably are the cows that ought to 
be kept, for they give a richer cream than any 
other kind in comracm use in this country ; but 
of course Alderneys are not the most profitable 
stock for cow-keepers in towns, witli whom the 
Yorkshii-e cow, essentially a short-horn, is the 
favorite breed, as it surpasses all others for the 
quantity of milk it yields. The milk, however, 
compared with that of the Allernej'or Ayrshire 
cow, is more watery and less rich in butter, and 
therefore not well suited for dairies in which 
butter and cheese are made. 
"In the spring of the year, and the carlj' part 
of summer, milk is more abundant, and the but- 
ter made from it of a finer flavor. As tiie sea- 
son advances, the supply diminishes, but be- 
comes richer in butter. The influence of food 
on the quality of milk is very striking. A half- 
starved cow not only yields but little milk, but 
what it yields is miserably poor. On the other 
hand, the liberal supply of food, rich in nitroge- 
nous and lihosphatic elements of nutrition, tells 
directly on the milk. 
"Nothing, therefore, can he more injudicious 
than to stint dairy cows in food. 
" The finest flavored milk and butter, I need 
hardly say, are produced by cows fed in siun- 
mer entirely on the grass of rich pcrmaneut 
pastures, and in winter on nothing else but hay 
made of fine short sweet grass. Eleven or 
twelve lbs. of grass produce about one lb. of 
milk, or a ton of good hay produces as nearly 
as possible one hundred galhms of milk. Few 
persons, however, having the opportunity of 
keeping cows for their own use, can afford to 
feed them in winter entirely upon hay. Turnips, 
mangolds, meal, brewer's grain, bran, or oil-cake, 
with more or less cut straw, in a great measure 
have to take the place of hay as a winter food. 
" Turnips give a disagreeable taste to the milk, 
and UKU-eover pioduce very watery milk. 
"Mangolds arc less objectionable, but should 
not be given to milch-cows without an allowance 
of three to five pounds of meal. Of all kinds 
of meal, none is equal in milk-producing quali- 
ties to bean-meal — a fact wliich finds a ready 
esplauation ia the circumstance that bean-meal 
contains as much as tweuty-eiglit per ceut. of 
flesh-forming matters, or the same class of com- 
pounds to which the curd and albumen of milk 
belong, and that it is also rich in phosphates, or 
bone-earth. Pea-meal or Egyptian lentils close- 
\y resemble bean-meal in composition, and may 
be used with equal advantage as an auxiliary 
and excellent food for milch-cows. It is not a 
little remarkable that in leguminous seeds, which 
are always rich in flesh-forming mailers, as well 
as in other articles of food, a laige percentage 
of nitrogenous or flesh-forming compounds usu- 
ally is associated with a lar_'e percentage of 
phosphates or bone-earth. There exists thus 
naturally an admirable jirovision In food, special- 
ly adapted for milch-cows, or young and grow- 
ing stock, to supply the animal not only with 
the material of which the curd of milk, or the 
flesh of young stock consist, but likewise to sup- 
ply bone materials, for which there is great de- 
mand when growing stock has lobe maintained 
In a thriving state, or cows have to be kept in a 
condition in which they may be expected to 
yield much and good milk. Oil-cake produces 
much and rich milk, but seriously injures its 
quality by giving it a bad flavor. 
"Bran, on the other hand, is a good food for 
milk. Indeed, nothing can be better as an 
auxiliary winter food for mileh-cows than four 
pounds of bran made into a thin mash, to which 
should be added four lbs. of bean-meal. Along 
with this about twenty-five lbs. of mangolds, 
and about fifteen lbs. of hay, and fifteen of straw- 
chaff", sliould be given per day to each cow. 
" Cows fed upon such a daily allowance of 
bran, beau-meal, mangolds, hay, and straw-chaff, 
during the winter months, yield much more 
milk of a superior flavor than cows fed upon 
turnips and most other kinds of auxiliary food. 
"When brewers' grains can be obtained at a 
reasonable price, they will be found one of the 
cheapest and best foods that can be given to 
milch cows. Brewer.s' gi'ains, I find, are much 
more nutritious than their appearance seems to 
warrant. Even in the wet condition in which 
grains are obtained from breweries, a condition 
in which they hold from To to 77 per cent, of 
water, they contain a good deal of I'eady made 
fat and flesh-forming matters. When air dry, 
brewers' grains, I have recently discovered, con- 
tain from 7 to 8 per cent, of oil and fatty mat- 
ter, and in round numbers 15 per cent, of ni- 
trogenous matters, and in this slate are more 
nutritious and a more useful food formilch-cow's 
than barley meal in the same stale of dryness. 
"During the last ten j-ears I have made a 
great many milk-analj'ses, from which I select a 
few for the purpose of illustrating the natural 
variations which may occur in the composition 
of equally genuine milk. The results are em- 
bodied in the following table, showing the com- 
position of four samples of genuine new milk 
obtained and analyzed by myself in the country. 
Composition of 4 samples of new country inilk. 
1 
a 
3 
4 
8.-,-30 
4-% 
3'V 
3-0- 
l-'.o 
s;-40 
3-43 
3-ia 
5-12 
•93 
S9-9- 
1-9" 
2-94 
4-4 
•64 
Fattv matter fpurc butter) 
€.■156100 curd) and a little albumen.. 
.MlUi-sugnr 
Miuei-al matter (asli) .. .. 
1-79 
2-sl 
401 
•66 
100-00 
100-00 
lOO-OO 
100-00 
Percentage of dry matters 
14-80 
12-60 
io-o-> 
9-30 
"The analyses of these four samples exhibit a 
wide range of variations, which I found in 
equally pure and genuine country milk. The 
first analysis represents the composition of a 
sample unusually rich in butter; number 3 
shows tlie composition of milk of average good 
qualities; the third of poor, and the last of very 
poor country milk. The richness of the first I 
ascribe to the extremely good pasture upon 
which the cows were fed at a season of the year 
when milk generally becomes richer in quality, 
but less in quantity— that is, in September and 
October, up to November. The last sample was 
also September milk produced on the Agricul- 
tural College farm, Cirencester. The cows were 
then out in grass, but the pasture was poor and 
overstocked, so that the daily growth of grass 
furnished hardly enough food to meet the daily 
waste to which the animal frame is subject, and 
was then not calculate 1 to meet an extra de- 
mand of materials for the formation of curd and 
butler. The poverty of this milk thus -was evi- 
dently due to an insufficient supply of food. 
" It will be seen that the variations in the 
amount of curd and milk-sugar in good and 
watery milk are far less striking than those in 
the amount of butler. A very good judgment 
of the quality of milk may therefore be formed 
from the amount of butter which it yields on 
churning, <u- from the amount of cream which 
it throws up on standing. Instruments, adapted 
for measuring the quality of cream thrown up 
by different samples of milk, are called creamo- 
nielers. These instruments are simply graduat- 
ed glass-tubes, divided into 100 equnl degrees, 
in which milk is poured up to Ihe division 
marked 0, and is kept at rest for twelve hours. 
Although the creaiuometer does not furnish I'e- 
sulls which correctly represent the real amount 
of butter in different samples, it nevertheless 
affords a ready means of ascertaining whether 
milk is rich or unusually poor in butler, in other 
words, whether or not milk has been skimmed 
to a considerable extent. Good milk, of average 
qualilj-, contains from lOi loll jier cent, of dry 
mailer, and about 24 per cent, of pure fat. It 
yields from 9 to 10 percent, of cream. Natural- 
ly poor milk contains 90 or more per cent, of 
water, and less than 2 per cent, of pure fat, and 
yields only 6 to 8 per cent, of cream, or even leas. 
"Experiments on a large scale liave shown 
me that the thickest cream does b}' no means 
give most butter, and that the cream which rises 
from different kinds of milk often varies greatly 
in composilion. Tlie indications of the creamo- 
meler, therefore, are fallible when samples of 
milk, produced under very different circum- 
stances, have to be tested. Milk sent by rail is 
necessarily subject to a good deal of agitation, 
and throws up less cream than that which has 
been less disturbed. 
" A great deal has been said and written about 
milk-adulferalion. "Sheep's brains, slarcli paste, 
chalk, and other white substances, which are 
satd— on what authority nobody has ever de- 
cided — to have been found in milk, only existlu 
the imagination of credulous or half informed 
scientific men. It is difficult to understand 
where all the sheep's brains should come from, 
and how they could be amalgamated with milk, 
nor is it at all likelj' that chalk, a substance in- 
soluble in water, and not easily kept in suspen- 
sion, should be ein|iloyed for adulterating milk. 
As a matter of fact I may state that I have 
examined many hundreds of samples of milk, 
and never found any chalk, norany adulterating 
material except an extra quantity of water, and 
that I never met as yet -with a chemist who has 
fonnd any of the clumsy adulterations which 
popular treatises on food describe as having 
been detected in London milk. 
" The whole question of milk adulteration 
and means of detecting them, resolves itself 
into an inquiry into the character of good, bad, 
and watered or skimmed raiUc, and the mode of 
