THE MAKING OF BUTTER.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXII, Issue 2788, 10 May 1911, Page 2

THE MAKING OF BUTTER.

THE SEPARATION QUESTION

During the past few years, the home separation system of butter-making has gained considerable ground in several districts of New Zealand, especially in the North of Auckland district, where the majority of the butler factories are worked on the home separation system, A great deal has been written for and against the system, and those in favour of the system are generally referring to the success of the system in Australia, but it ought not to be the aim of New Zealand to turn out a product like Australia, which always obtains from 4s to 6s less per cwt. for butter on the English market. This represents a considerable sum in a year, which would be less to the New Zealand farmers, and there is no doubt that the low price for New Zealand butter on the English market during the past season is to a great extent due to the considerable amount of home separated butter sent there. Denmark, on the other hand, has for many years obtained the highest prices for her butter on the English market, so New Zealand should rather look to Denmark than to Australia for information. Danish butter has been as much as 18s per cwt. more than New Zealand butter, during the. past season, and it^vould be worth many thousands ot pounds to the New Zealand farmer to get the same price as the Danish. In Denmark there is no home separation whatever, and no creameries either, all the 'milk is delivered direct to the butter factories, so the butter-makers there get the raw product under control at a much earlier stage than under both the creamery and home separation systems. The home separation system was tried in Denmark in the " nineties," when several factories were run on that system, and in the beginning the suppliers were well satisfied, but when they had to be contented with a lower price for their butter fat the creamery system was reverted to. "The Danish farmer always looks into the details of anything he goes into, and he soon found out that not only did he have to accept a smaller price for his butter fat, but it was greater expense to go in for home separation, and took up more of his time, and he also had to bear a larger loss of fat -in the skimming. Professor Boggeld, the greatest authority on dairying in Denmark, says that home separation is out of the question in Denmark, where the butter is made for export, and must therefore be of good keeping quality. Now, New Zealand is also making butter for export, so of

course it is just as important to her, to turn out a product of good keeping quality, and you can not do that on the home-separation system. Those in favour of the system have said that by pasteifcising the cream, you could turn out butter ot just as good /keeping quality as tyn the creamery system. But that

is nlbt a fact, as by pasteurising you only check the bad flavours lor the time being, but it will hardly check them until the butter is placed on the table of the English consumer, which often is more than two months after it was made. The home system can hardly be pronounced as a success in all the countries where.it.has been introduced, as vvell be seen from the following, taken from the " Chicago Daily Produce":— "Another thing that is a well-known fact is, that the introduction of the hand separator, made possible by the centralising in the creamery business, resulted in a greatly deteriorated butter product."

Now, in regard to the loss in skimming by hand separator, the following may be an eye opener to several farmers. At the Royal Danish Experimental Station, Copenhagen, an exhaustive trial was carried out in 1910, with a three

power separator and the average percentage of fat left in the skim milk was .066, .067 and .075, taken by the Got-tlieb-Rose method of testing.

At the Koniffsberg (Germany) Experimental Creamery several trials were carried out with hand separators, and gave the following results :—ln twelve

runs the percentage ot fat in the skim milk varied from .105 to .236 when the separator was run at its normal speed, that is, 70 turns of the crank per minute, and the milk heated to 99 deg. .Fahr. In sixteen runs in which the crank was only turned 63 turns per minute and the milk put through at 70 deg. Fahr., the tests varied from .167 per cent, to .512 per cent. The average tor the twelve best runs was .177 per cent., and this the report considers satisfactory. Yet this is more than double what was obtained by the power separators, and if this is the result obtained under the most favourable condition of home separation, with experts in charge of sepa-

rators, it seems quite fair to charge the average small separator run on the average farm with at least 2.5 per cent, of fat lost in skimming, which is four

times as much as the power separators, and this loss must of necessity be considered when the two systems are com-

pared.