Dairy Farmers' Notes

Feilding Star, Volume XV, Issue 64, 13 September 1893, Page 2

Dairy Farmers' Notes

Milk Teats. — A machine that is of importance to the dairyman, and which has only been invented during the past three years, is the Babcock milk tester. It is a marvel of simplicity and efficiency, and a knowledge of its usefulness should be spread to every farm in the country where dairying or the breeding of dairy cattle is a systematic industry. No doubt several of the appliances are already in use in the colonies, but the lesson to be enforced is, that every farmer owning half a dozen milch cows should possess one. The process is as follows : — lmmediately after milking a sample of exact amount is taken from the milk of each cow, and each sample is placed in a separate test bottle of particular shape. Condensed sulphuric acid to an exact amount is next added to the contents of eacli bottle. Then the bottles are all fixed upon a horizontal rotatory wheel, which is spun rapidly round for a few seconds by means of a simple hand crank. The effect of this is that the acid cuts the milk, disintegrates it, and liberates the oil or butter fat. The latter being lighter, occupies the long neck of the test bottle, while the sulphuric acid and skim milk fall to the bottom. The neck of the bottle has a graduated scale, so that the exact amount of butter fat can be instantly read. A ready reckoner accompanies the instrument, and the percentage of butter fat in the sample «>f milk shows the quantity of butter in the entire milking. The test is absolutely accurate, as can be proved by actual verifying experiments with the churn. The advantages of this contrivance are that a dairyman has at hand a means of telling the exact value of each of his cows, and he ascertains in a few minutes how much buttei each individual cow produces from every gallon of its milk. By this means he knows which cows to rear future dairy stock from, and it becomes perfectly possible to grade up a dairy herd from an average production per cow of 150lbs of butter per annum to an average of 300lbs and over. The money advantages of this system as a whole applied over a large dairy factory are incalculable. The Babcock test plays an important test at the creamery. A farmer's milk is not merely measured by the gallon or weighed by pounds but it is put to the test for butter fats, and he is credited on the books of the establishment according to the percentage of these shown. Thus absolute justice is dealt out to each co-operator both at the creamery and cheese factory, for the tests are applicable equally as well to the latter class of establishment, insomuch as experience has proved the butter value and the curd value of milk to be practically identical. Subsidiary to the Babcock appliance, and almost indispensable to the successful use of the latter, is the Scovell sampling tube, for taking uniform milk samples. The instrument, which is in shape a long cylinder, is dipped right down to the bottom of the can, when slight pressure closes a sliding valve at the base, so that when the tube is lifted, a complete volumn of milk is withdrawn from the can, and an exact and complete sample is obtained. It is obvious that merely to dip out a sample from the surface of the milk, or to tap it at the bottom, would lead to inaccurate rosults, while the ordinary tube in use inevitably spills some of the sample. The more expensive instrument (the Babcock) is purchasable in the United States for £1 to £3, according to the number of test bottles required.