SHEEP'S MILK CHEESE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 176, 5 November 1941, Page 3

SHEEP'S MILK CHEESE

MADE BY BRITISH FARMERS

Czechoslovak refugees are helping Britain to get cheese from sheep's milk. They have had experience o-f ewe-milking in Czechoslovakia which used to export 2000 tons of ewe's milk cheese a. year.

The making of this novel cheese lias become practicable by the invention of a new milking machine just designed in Britain, and, after experiments at the Northamptonshire Farm Institute, 400 ewes a day are now being milked by it. The ewes are put in pens in units of six and milking is done at a pulsation speed of 100 per minute. During the milking the milk is automatically transferred to one of two churns, either of which can bei emptied without affecting the main vacuum, and power is supplied bv a 1 V-i h.p. engine driving a rotary vacuum pump.

British farmers arc now to be encouraged to milk their ewes, if only for a short period after weaning the lambs. In both butterfat and curd ewe's milk is nearly three times as rich as cow's milk and each ewe Could provide between lib and 21 bs tif curd a week for at least four months of the year. There are so many ewes in Britain that the people could, it is estimated, get as jnuch chccse from them as they ate before the Avar and still leave some over for export.