250 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[June, 
What Constitutes Good Milk ? 
The quality of milk is a matter which con¬ 
cerns not only the consumer of the liquid as 
milk, hut also those who make butter and cheese 
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, chemist to the Royal Agricultural So¬ 
ciety of England, has 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 satisfactoiy. 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 the 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 extent 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, Aldernej^s or Guern¬ 
seys unquestionably are the cows that ought to 
be kept, for they give a richer cream than any 
other kind in common use in this country; but 
of course Alderneys are not the most profitable 
stock for cow-keepers in towns, with whom the 
Yorkshire cow, essentially a short-horn, is the 
favorite breed, as it surpasses all others for the 
quantit}^ of milk it yields. The milk, Iiowever, 
compared with that of the Alderney 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 spi'ing of the year, and the early part 
of summer, milk is more abundant, and the but¬ 
ter made from it of a finer flavor. As the 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 onl}" 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 phosphatic elements of nutrition, tells 
directly on the milk. 
“Nothing, therefore, can be more injudicious 
tlian to stint dairy cows in food. 
“ The finest flavored milk and butter, I need 
hardly say, are produced by cows fed in sum¬ 
mer entirely on the grass of rich permanent 
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 gallons of milk. Few 
persons, however, having the opportunity of 
keeping cows for tlieir own use, can afford to 
feed them in winter cnlirely upon hay. Turnips, 
mangolds, meal, brewer’s grain, bran, or oil-cake, 
with more or less cut straw, in a great measure 
liave to take the place of hay as a winter food. 
“ Turnips give a disagreeable taste to the milk, 
and moreover produce 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 which finds a ready 
explanation in the circumstance that bean-meal 
contains as much as tweuty-eight per cent, 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¬ 
ly 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 matters, as well 
as in other articles of food, a large percentage 
of nitrogenous or flesh-forming compounds usu¬ 
ally is associated with a large percentage of 
phosphates or bone-earth. There exists thus 
naturally an admirable provision in food, special¬ 
ly adapted for milch-cows, or jmung 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 to be 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 milch-cows than four 
pounds of bi'au made into a thin mash, to which 
should be added four lbs. of bean-meal. Along 
with this about twenty-flve lbs. of mangolds, 
and about fifteen lbs. of ha}", and fifteen of straw- 
chaff, should be given per day to each cow. 
“ Cows fed upon such a daily allowance of 
bran, bean-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. Brewers’ grains, 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 75 to 77 per cent, of 
water, they contain a good deal of ready made 
fat and flesh-forming matters. When air dry, 
brewers’ grains, I liave 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 state are more 
nutritious and a more useful food for milch-cows 
than barley meal in the same state of dryness. 
“During the last ten years I have made a 
great many milk-analyses, 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 samjiles of new country milk. 
t 
‘4 
3 
4 
a")‘2o 
1*06 
5*0’ 
1*13 
87-40 
3-43 
3-13 
5-12 
-93 
S9-9.-) 
1- 99 
2- 91 
4-.U 
-04 
90-70 
1- 79 
2- Sl 
■1-04 
-06 
Fatty matter (pure butter) . 
Caseine (curd) and a little albumen.. 
Milk-su^ar.. 
Percentacce of dry matters. 
100-00 
100-00 
100-00 
100-00 
M-SO 
12-CO 
10-0.1 
9-30 
“The analyses of these four samples e.xhibita 
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 2 
shows the 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 theyear 
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 calculated to meet an extra de¬ 
mand of materials for t he formation of curd and 
butter. 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 amo’unt of butter. A very good judgment 
of the quality of milk may therefore be formed 
from the amount of butter which it yields on 
churning, or from the amount of cream which 
it throws up on standing. Instruments, adapted 
for measuring the quality of cream thro-wn up 
by different samples of milk, are called creamo- 
meters. These instruments are simply graduat¬ 
ed glass-tubes, divided into 100 equal degrees, 
in which milk is poured up to the division 
marked 0, and is kept at rest for twelve hours. 
Although the creamometer does not furnish re¬ 
sults which correctly represent the real amount 
of butter in different samples, it nevertheless n 
affords a ready means of ascertaining whether 
milk is rich or unusually poor in butter, in other 
words, whether or not milk has been skimmed 
to a considerable extent. Good milk, of average 
quality, contains from lOi toll per cent, of dry 
matter, and about 2i 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 less. 
“Experiments on a large scale have shown 
me that the thickest cream does by no means 
give most butter, and that the cream which rises 
from different kinds of milk often varies greatly 
in composition. The indications of the creamo¬ 
meter, 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 th.at which has 
been less disturbed. \ 
“A great deal has been said and written about 
milk-adulteration. Sheep’s brains, starch paste, 
chalk, and other white substances, which are 
said—on what authority nobody has ever de¬ 
cided—to have been found in milk, only exist in 
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 likely that chalk, a substance in¬ 
soluble in water, and not easily kept in suspen¬ 
sion, should be employed for adulterating milk. 
As a matter of fact I may state that I hav’e 
examined many hundreds of samples of milk, 
and never found any chalk, nor any adulterating 
material except an extra quantity of water, and 
that I never met as yet with a chemist avho has 
found 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 milk, and the mode of 
