8 
Colorado Experiment Station 
milking as they should be. It frequently happens that the hired man 
will be called in from hauling manure or feeding the pigs, or some 
similar operation, to help with the milking. The chances are that 
he will never think of washing his hands, but, if, contrary to the 
usual custom, he should do so, nine times out of ten he will wipe 
them either on his dirty overalls or on a red bandanna that has es¬ 
caped the wash tub some three weeks past. 
It seems almost unnecessary to have to call attention to the 
danger of employing persons as milkers who are suffering with any 
contagious or infectious disease. Tuberculosis, typhoid fever, 
and diptheria may gain access to the milk through such chan¬ 
nels, and epidemics follow as a result. No one who is afflicted with 
any of these troubles should be allowed any part, no matter how small, 
in the care and handling of the milk. 
While speaking of the spread of disease through milk as the 
medium, the common house fly must be charged with being the most 
dangerous agent known to humanity in polluting milk, and the great¬ 
est menace to public health by way of spreading disease. The bare 
statement of this fact should be sufficient to convince any one of 
average intelligence of the great importance of exterminating this 
pest, 
As a rule, the housewife, to whom is entrusted the cleaning of 
the pails, pans and cans, does her work more thoroughly than the 
others associated with her in the dairy work. However, it may not 
be out of place to mention one or two points in connction with her 
duties. The mere scalding of a utensil by pouring boiling water 
over it is not always adequate to sterilize it and render it sweet and 
clean. It is frequently necessary to allow water to boil in the pails 
and cans for a half hour or longer in order that the dirt and grease 
which find their way into the cracks and seams can be soaked up and 
gotten rid of. Some good washing powder should be used in this 
operation. The strainer cloths should be boiled thoroughly. After 
thorough rinsing with boiling water, the different utensils should be 
placed in the brightest sunshine available, and not on a bench on the 
shady side of the milk-house. Bright sunshine is one of the worst 
enemies of germ life, and since it is so effective and so cheap, let 
us use lots of it, not only in our milk cans, but in our damp, musty 
cellars, “spare” bed rooms, company parlors, and then turning toward 
the dark, gloomy barns, give the horses and cattle their share. 
The writer has a farmer in mind whose usual custom is to cool 
off his milk bucket, which has been sterilizing in the bright sunshine 
for half a day previous to milking, by pumping water into it from 
a well located in the barn yard at the edge of a hog-wallow. This 
is certainly a very questionable procedure, since practically all of the 
good from scalding and sunning is counteracted and more than this 
there is often danger of introducing undesirable germs into the milk 
by this means. 
It is a matter of common knowledge, that milk absorbs foreign 
odors very readily and retains them as tenaciously. It follows, natu- 
