JAN. 22 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
is all the working that is necessary. A marble 
slab Is an excellent thing to work the butter 
on. A thick plank, or block of hard maple or 
beech, not less than twelve inches square and 
four inches thick, placed upon folded towels 
or in a large pan to collect any moisture that 
may escape, is convenient. There are several 
convenient batter-workers made for use in 
dairies, all of which serve their purpose very 
well, and between which there is not much to 
choose. The main point to be observed in 
working butter is to avoid plastering it with 
the implement used, whether it be the hand, 
the ladle, or a lever, or a rotary crusher. The 
butter may be squeezed with impunity, to a 
considerable extent, but if it is plastered or 
the implement is drawn over it with a sliding 
motion, it is seriously damaged and the tex¬ 
ture destroyed. 
Butter Is salted aB a meaus of preservation. 
Some persons prefer it unsalted when it can 
be procured fresh. In this condition are pre¬ 
served all the most delicate flavors which are 
lost when salt is added. In the domestic 
dairy, butter may be sent to the table in this 
way or even direct from the churn without 
washing, and with all its native buttermilk ad¬ 
hering. as an unusal delicacy. But for ordin¬ 
ary purposes about six per cent, of salt is 
added to the butter; this is equal to one ounce 
to the pound. The Balt iB sprinkled evenly over 
the butter at the last of the working when it is 
sliced or gashed. The butter is then loosely 
gathered together and it is set away in the 
dairy for 21 hours. Duriug this time some 
milky water usually escapes from it, and this 
is poured off at tbo final working. This is 
done in the same manner as before, and is 
continued until any streakiness in the butter 
is removed, and the whole is brought to an 
even aud regular color and consistence. Borne 
persons color their butter when working it, 
but this is not to be auvised. for the color can¬ 
not be made even, and the butter will be 
streaky and patchy in spite of the most pro¬ 
longed and injurious mixing. Some frightful 
examples of such butter are often seen at rural 
hotels and railroad restaurants. Coloring 
should always be done in the churn by mixing 
the proper quantity of prepared cotor in with 
the cream. The usual quantity is one tea- 
spoouful to three gallons of cream. This is 
sufficient with the beat Jersey and Ayrshire 
cream; but each dairyman should test this 
matter for himself, as the natural color of the 
cream varies with the cows, the feed aud the 
manner of keeping the milk and cream. 
The salt used is ot greater importance than 
might easily be considered. The usual impuri¬ 
ties of salt are chloride and sulphate of lime 
and chloride and sulphate of magnesia. Lime 
mixed with fats combluos and forms an insol¬ 
uble white soap. When lime is present in 
salt, small, white specks of soapy substance, 
are formed in the butter, thus injuring its 
keeping qualites. Magnesia is bitter, and if 
this is present the flavor is injured, so that it 
is of the greatest importance to have the purest 
salt. Unfortunately, ourAmerican salt is not of 
sufficient purity or uniformity for dairy pur¬ 
poses, aud thebest qualities only of English salt 
should be used. Of these there are two kinds 
on the market, known as the Ashton, and Hig- 
gin’B Eureka. The latter is fast superseding 
the former on account of its perfect, pol¬ 
ity, uniformity of grain and freedom from 
objectionable scale. As the difference in price 
between good aud bad salt is very small and 
the difference between good and bad butter is 
very large, the extra cost of a sack of the best 
saltmay easily be saved upou one pail of butter. 
A huudred pounds of salt will pack 1,000 pounds 
Of butter, and two to five cents a pound ou this 
quantity may easily be lost by means of bad 
ealt, making a loss of $30 to $80 to offset the 
gain of one dollar, or less. 
- ♦ ♦ » - 
LARGE YIELDS OF DAIRY COWS. 
L. S. HARDIN. 
It is a good sign of the times to see men who 
own extra good cows bringing before the pub¬ 
lic systematic statements of their yields, not 
only for a few days in flush times, but a con¬ 
tinuous record from calf to calf. Just now the 
dairy world is startled with the records of two 
cows that seem so far to surpass other cows 
that the race to the hindmost appears hope¬ 
less. Iu the business of dairying a cow that 
yields 850 pounds of butter a year is consid¬ 
ered a superlatively good oue. She stands 
at the head of the herd, and it is generally 
considered that men who follow a calling fora 
livelihood know best how to manage It. Here 
at least it has always boon thought that experi¬ 
ence was valuable ; but the records, so far aB 
at preseut made up, say no. Two meu who 
follow callings totally distinct from dairying, 
nave carried the art of butter production prac¬ 
tically beyond all competition. The owners of 
Lu rotas and Belle of Seituate are in no sense 
dairymen, though one at least owns a small 
herd of dairy cows. They come upon the stage 
comparatively strangers and produce yields 
that startle the community. Jersey Belle of 
Seituate made 705 pounds of butter in a year, 
while Eurotas followed with a total yield of 
778 pounds. 
As already stated in the Rural of December 
11, ’80, this remarkable yield of butter is from 
7,525 pounds of milk, or about nine and a half 
pounds of milk to the pouad of butter. The 
best work I ever witnessed with the milk of 
native cattle was in the Chautauqua trials be¬ 
tween so-called deep-setting and shallow pans, 
at a high temperature. With the milk of 
native cows in Summer, each method required 
2l| pounds of milk to one pound of butter. In 
the trials between Mr. Eastburn Reeder, of 
Pennsylvania, and myself, with the milk of 
Jersey and Guernsey cows, I reduced the yield 
to 17 pounds of milk with deep cans, and Mr. 
Reeder to ID with his half-shallow pans. '1'ha 
above trials were with the mixed milk of herds ; 
but though each one of the above Jerseys 
had been often tested singly, so far as cream 
yield was concerned, there had never been 
found any great variation in the quality of 
the milk from single cows. I remember once 
a most reliable gentleman told me his imported 
Jersey cow had made a pound of butter from 
10 pounds of milk. We lived near each other, 
and he wanted me to verify the statement. On 
investigation I found all hands were laboring 
uuder a mistake. The cow was approaching 
parturition, aud the whole milk, after standing 
a while, seemed to settle into a thick mass like 
yellow cream-cheese, and a little stirring sep¬ 
arated the water from the curd, leaving an ar¬ 
ticle not merchantable a9 butter. 
I have often heard men claim to have owned 
cows that yielded almost pure butter. It is a 
common occurrence to find little soft pellets, 
like the cream that first comes iu churulug. on 
the sides of the pail while milking. Some 
cows may yield this article, whatever it is, to 
just about the consistency of butter that may 
fairly be worked into a merchantable article. 
It is thus only that I can account for a contin¬ 
uous yield of one pound of butter from nine 
aud a half pounds of milk, aud yet the science 
of testing cows is so decidedly in its infancy 
that it may be presumption on my part to 
question what at present appears phenomenal. 
We have seen the speed of trotting horses 
increased, lowering the record to “ two-forty,” 
without pedigrees. After that the screuco of 
breeding took a baud, and, step by step, in the 
course of long years aHd after great effort and 
long-continued experiments in certain lines of 
breeding, we have seen Maud S. cut the record 
down lower than any of her predecessors. 
This was done, not at one swoop, but horse 
after horse lowered the record second by sec¬ 
ond, until Maud S.'s great achievement outdid 
all former efforts, though probably not all 
future ones. Now, if we group the horses by 
their present performances we find them grow¬ 
ing more numerous ut almost every second aa 
we recede from the beBt record. With cows, 
so far as we kuow. the butter yields of the 
above " queens of the pall "stand nearly 100 
per cent, above those of all rivals. To be sure, 
there are some old records giving a gross yield 
of Borne 400 pouuds a year, but the above are 
the only continuous records ; aud Eurotas I 
believe is the only cow that has ever made so 
much butter from so little milk during the 
flood of her yield- All of these suggestive 
doubts may be owing only to the absence of a 
greater uumber of records, t he whole matter 
of testing yields Is ouly in its infaney, aud we 
are in comparative ignorance of what many 
of our cows are doing every day, and after the 
keeping of accounts becomes a more common 
practice we may discover many yields that 
approach to these. 
It will be noted from the record given in the 
Rural of December lUh last, that this test of 
Eurotas was wisely begun iu the Fall, giving 
her the advantage of a maternal stimulus dur¬ 
iug the Winter aud the revival of her How when 
she came on green grass in Summer ; yet, as 
before stated, the yield of milk is not remark¬ 
able. Herds of Holsteins and natives have 
equaled it time a«d again, while the food she 
consumed could not have altered the ordinary 
Jersey yield from, say, 17 pounds toflj for one 
of butter. This must beau idiosyncrasy of the 
cow herself, and it may be one well worth pre- 
serviug, for this quality of turning a small 
amount of milk into a large quantity of butter 
need not have the exhausting effect of yielding 
a heavy flow of milk, like Col. Hoffman’s Hol¬ 
stein that gave over 16 000 pouuds in a year. 
Eurotas seems to have strangely varied her 
yield during the year, in December nearly 
doubling the yield of November, while in Feb¬ 
ruary, March and April she fell below her 
yield in January. Then again, in September 
she gave 454^ pouuds and otly 123^ in Octo¬ 
ber. This may have been owing to the quality 
of feed, as she may have required certain ele¬ 
ments to form her peculiar yield; for, in the 
absence of further explanation, we must call 
this not only a wonderful, but an exceedingly 
peculiar yield. I would like very much to see 
an analysis of her milk compared with that of 
her stall companion, to discover, if possible, 
iu what consists this great yield of butler. It 
might be that science would point out in her 
milk some peculiarity that could be discerned 
iu other cows, and thus a new breed be started 
with a butter tendency that would leave even 
the best Jersey as far behind as Eurotas 
now does the average Jersey. Her owner, Mr. 
Dailing, is wealthy and enterprising, and I 
hope he will have his cow's milk analyzed to 
facilitate the discovery or formation of a new 
breed. I see no reason why the new butter- 
yielding capacity could not be combined, at 
least to a large degree, with the capacity for 
deep milking, as I think it often has been in 
the case of the native cow where both qualities 
have beta bred for. Tneu, if the piogenyof 
Eurotas and the Hoffman cows could be 60 
crossed as to produce an offspring capable of 
giving the milk yield of the latter aud the 
butter yield of the former, what a wonder we 
would have—something Iiko 1,700 pounds of 
butter a year from one cow. 
The plain, practical dairymen, with their 
years of hard experience, cannot be blamed 
for some lack of confidence iu these rematka- 
ble yields, and it is therefore all the greater 
pity that we have not some accepted method 
of public trial that would enlist general conli- 
denee to the extent of setliug these large yields 
up as standards for otberB to work to ; but in¬ 
stead of agreeing upon some simple and inex¬ 
pensive method of testing and recording these 
yields, the sole use they are put to is to make 
them the excuse for writing flaring articles in 
praiseof some geuUeman’s herd containing the 
blood of the famous cows so lauded, and then 
iu a mouth or two the sequel follows iu a flam¬ 
ing advertisement of a public sale of this gen¬ 
tleman's herd, as though he had labored all his 
life and spent all his money to the end that any 
one who chooses to become a purchaser may 
profit by his labor and pecuniary sacrifices. 
There has been such a commingling of large 
records and big auction sales of late, coupliug 
sensational prices with animals of ordiuary 
capacity, that a slight film of incrtdulity 
causes one to wonder how far one is to be de¬ 
pendent upon the other. 
It would be a good thing If our State Boards 
of Agriculture would take this subjectof te3ticg 
cows under consideration, and see if testers 
could not be chosen with skill enough to cor¬ 
rectly measure a cow’s capacity; honesty 
enough to give her the full measure of her per¬ 
formance, aud independence enough to tell ex¬ 
actly what she does, without fear of harm or 
hope of reward. The need of some trustworthy 
method of testing the yield of milk of dairy 
cows, as well as the butter aud cheese pro¬ 
ducts from that milk, is acknowledged on all 
hands; but so loug as the establishment of 
such a method is left to private enterprise 
few farmers will avail themselves of it, as its 
employment must entail some expense. 
54 
$arm (gtononij. 
COOKING, TING AND GRINDING F0D 
DER AND GRAIN. 
S. B. PECK. 
It never seemed to me good economy to enfc 
straw, hay or corn fodder for horses or cattle, 
for the finer the fodder is made the less it will 
be masticate ’ the less gastric juice wiil be 
mixed wittatt Imd the less nutriment extract¬ 
ed. Neither I I think there is any possible 
advantage in | rcing this fodder down the ani¬ 
mal’s throat by mixini^with it the more palat¬ 
able ground grain. Both the horse and the ox 
need something more bulky than gYain, and if 
there is anything befoiethem in the stall, even 
though it be nothing more palatable than poor 
straw or the leafless stalks of corn, (hey will, 
after eating their grain, eat of this coarse 
fodder till tbeir wants are satisfied. 
1) rom 1845 to 186111 lived in a community of 
farmers, and I noticed, as I visited their barns 
and sheds, that every one had a cutting-box 
set away in some out-of-the-way place, but I 
scarcely ever saw one iu use. They had been 
highly recommended In the papers and all had 
bought them, but soon got tired of, or out of con¬ 
ceit with, them. During that time there came 
out in the papers an analysis of the corn-cob, 
showing that i'. contained considerable nutii- 
ment, and there were statements of experi¬ 
ments with feeding corn and-cob meal, showing 
a great benefit from the cob. Well, *‘it look,” 
and oar miller gave verbal notice that he 
would get up a corn aud-oob grinder, and that 
he was having a sign painted to put on his 
mill, “ Corn in the Near ground 'ere." The 6ign 
was put up, all translated into plain Yankee 
language, and everybody (ininns your humble 
servant) took com iu the ear to be ground. 
Soon my nearest neighbor asked me to look at 
his old horse, Billy. Well. Billy did look sorry 
aud ashamed of himself, and I soon learned 
that wbat I suspected was true—the old horse 
had been cheated with corn-and cob meal, and 
I said to my friend, ‘T have no doubt that what 
you have read about the nutriment in cobs is 
true, aud the same thing is true of sawdust, but 
the question for you Is, can your twenty-year- 
old. horse extract this nutriment out of such a 
mass of rubbish? Give your corn-and-eob 
meal to your chickens, they will show ‘ which 
is which,'aud give Billy honest food." Billy 
was soon cured. It was always a question 
with me whether any quadruped could taka 
into its stomach with impunity the sharp, 
cuttiug edges of a broken corn cob. 
There have lately appeared in our mar¬ 
kets hand bills highly recommending cook¬ 
ed feed for horses and cattle, and offering 
to sell it for only ten centsper hundred¬ 
weight over the price of raw. My ueigbbor 
tried It, and was pleased. I asked him if he 
knew how much water there was in it. •* Oh, 
it is perfectly dry,” he replied. I said, So is 
your bread dry, but chemists say there is 45 
per cent, of water in it.” The q*esiion with 
'' jia not so much whether it is better for the 
.j^^aing as whether oue gets as much nutri¬ 
ment for the money in the cooked as in the 
raw. If wheat flour takes up 45 per cent, of 
water in the process of bread-making.it is 
quite likely that ground com and oats will 
take up some water in cooking, and probably 
enough to pay the expense. 
Tnoee who have paid no attention to chem¬ 
istry can hardly understand that water in 
plants, vegetables, and in many other sub¬ 
stances is not necessarily liquid, or even wet to 
the touch. Gypsum in the stone is as dry as 
any other stoue, but when subjected to heat 
in the process of making stucco, about 22 per 
cent, is driven off in steam or vapor. Lime¬ 
stone, after being subjected to heat and its 
carbon driven off, takes readily over 30 per 
cent, of water in slaking, and is still dry. The 
potato aud other cultivated roots, with ail our 
fruits and even animal flesh, are said to con¬ 
tain from 70 to 95 per cent, of water combined 
with their other constituents, the combination 
of which forms a solid. 
THE ICE TRADE OF THE ST. LAWRENCE 
RIVER. 
The ice trade of the St. Lawrence River has, 
within the last few years, grown to almost 
fabulous proportions. This river is really 
one of the finest Ice-fields in the world. No 
other river has water so pure that makes ice 
of 6uch tine quality. While the Hudson be¬ 
tween Albauy and New York may pres Q a 
scene of greater activity while the s> E u 
lasts, yet the season for harvesting ice I ,s 
much longer upou the St. Lawrence au< 9 le 
ice is of a superior quality, making it desira¬ 
ble for shipping to Southern points. Dealers 
in ice all along the 8t. Lawrence never re¬ 
sort to any plate but that river for tbeir 
supply, and iu later years quite an extensive 
jobbing trade has sprung up iu shipping ice to 
the lake ports. In securiug a good crop it is 
very often necessary to let the ice break up 
at least once, and perhaps oftenex, iu order to 
FIGURE 30. 
