CLEAN MILK AND COMMERCIAL STARTERS AS 
FACTORS IN BUTTER MAKING 
By Walter G. Sackett. 
It is a fact familiar to all of us, whether we are buying butter 
or whether we have butter to sell, that farm, ranch and country butter 
seldom, if ever, commands as high a price on the retail market as 
creamery butter. There are no doubt cases where precedent, alone, 
dictates the price of the farmer’s product, it having become an estab¬ 
lished custom in certain towns and at certain stores to pay the country¬ 
man from five to ten cents per pound less for his product than for 
the creamery goods. Injustice is often done the farmer in this way, 
for some country butter is equal in quality, if not superior, to creamery 
butter. Why, then, this universal custom of rating the creamery 
product above that of the ranch? The cold truth of the matter is that 
the average run of ranch butter is inferior in flavor and keeping 
qualities to the ordinary creamery output, and the consumer is not 
willing to pay the factory price for the inferior home article. The 
question at once arises, why this should be the case, for, most cer¬ 
tainly the conditions which enter into good butter making ought to 
be more easily controlled by the individual farmer, who can give 
his personal attention to each step in the process, from the milking 
up to delivery to the consumer, than by the creamery overseer who 
must take the whole milk or gathered cream from many different 
sources, some clean, some filthy, and mix it all together. Yet by 
proper handling from this point, he is able to turn out a first class 
product. Of course, it goes without saying that no one can make as 
good butter from dirty, filthy cream as from that which has been pro¬ 
duced on a clean farm where some attention is given to the sanitary 
conditions. Cleanliness is without question the first and foremost 
consideration in making either good butter or cheese. The word 
cleanliness when used in connection with the dairy and dairy products 
has a very broad meaning and demands the attention of everyone who 
has anything at all, no matter how insignificant, to do with the care 
and handling of the milk and cream. The farmer who does the milk¬ 
ing is apt to forget that dirt and filth are intimately associated with 
his part of the work, and no matter how careless he has been with the 
milking, he expects the good housewife to turn out a butter of excel¬ 
lent quality, which will score as high or higher than the creamery 
product. This is absolutely impossible and out of the question. 
Those who are engaged in butter making as a profession consider 
that the two most important factors in good butter making are clean 
milk and proper ripening of the cream. Both of these can be con- 
