COWS EATING BONES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1461, 20 January 1887, Page 3

COWS EATING BONES.

~* Aourloua experience concerning tainted butter is given m the following letter from Mr J. Hamilton, to the Southland Times : " I feel eorry to shook the tender feelings of not a few who have to use butter not qtr'e to their tastes, but I think it is a duty to royB»1f and the public m general, to make pubbo what I have recently proved, and which may be a fertile source of bad butter. One paddook on my farm is bounded on one side by what wan a formidable swamp m former day*, but was ditched come time ago. The ewamp contained an amount of bones of swamped horaea, cattle, and sheep, and it waa grazed along wi'h the paddook I apeak of. For years, whenever I turned the cows into this paddock the butter got bad and ivnold, and would not keep over four or five d&ya at moat. Suspecting some deleterious plant or wood m the pasture I cropped the paddook, sowing it down In grace or turnips which were eaten off lart year by sheep, Thia year I turned the cows on it again, and to my surprise the butter at once became bad. An article I read somewhere, which atateb that bones eaten by cows

tainted the- milk came to my memory, and when I examined the swamp i

found that the cows were making a perfect onslaught on the half rotten bones which were coming to the surface thro iwh the vegetable matter rotting and subsiding by being dried. Ihe bones were carefiily gntheied, put into bags and tied, but not carried away In a few days the butter was all right, but m about a weeic the abominable taste reappeared ag»in, and on examining the place I found that the cows had horned one of the bags, and eaten nearly a fourth of the bones it contained. Th s BfOJred, the butter came all ri ht ngain, and this quite convinced me that the bones were the cause."