WHY MILK VARIES IN QUALITY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2112, 30 November 1880, Page 4

WHY MILK VARIES IN QUALITY.

One of the reasons why poor land produces milk which, as compared with that produced on good land,-is deficient in fatty matters, and eo is better adapted for cheese making than for butter making, lies in the fact that the grasses on it contain a larger proportion of ileeh forming ingredients—as albumen, fibrin, casein, gluten, .Ac. and a smaller one of fat forming ones—ns starch, gum, sugar, &o. —than are 'found in the grasses of rich land. Sat another reason is found in the additional respiration of the oxygen which takes place in the animal economy where cows are pastured on poor land, and hare logo through more exercise in the search for food. The oxygen of the air, which is inhaled to an increased extent by animals who take an extra amount of exercise, has a direct tendency to consume the fat in the system of -the animal—actual combustion of the fat takes place. Hence the increased heat of the animal’s -body, and hence also a diminished amount of fat among the tissues and a diminished proportion of hatter in the milk. Again, the more exercise an animal takes, the greater will be the waste or breaking op of the tissues of the body ; and as this is the source from which the curd in milk is derived, milk produced on land whose herbage is scanty will contain a larger Oortion of card than milk produced on whose herbage is abundant. It will now bo perceived why it is that the milk produced on poor land has a larger proportion of curd and a smaller one of butter then that produced on good land j it will bo equally plain that the smaller the distance cows have to travel to and from their pastures, whether those pastures be rich or poor land, the richer in fate their milk to, and it will bo even still more evident that the faster they are made to traverse that distance the poorer their milk will be. Distance and speed bang about a greater inhalation of oxygen, ana the more the oxygen that enters the system the greater will bo the consumption of fat in it. In the hot weather in summer, when cows are tormented by flies and by heat, the evening’s milk will always be found poorer than the morning’s in butler. This is explained on the same principle, and so is the fact that the milk of stall-fed cows is richer in fats than the milk of cows who roam at large on the pastures.—From " Dairy Farming/’ fay Professor Sheldon.