Factory Butter Making.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 201, 30 April 1887, Page 8

Factory Butter Making.

Although as has been maintained in The Farmer butter can be made of as good quality in private dairies as in a factory, still the fact is becoming plain that butter factories are simply sweeping badly made butter from the local markets. There are many settlers abLe and w illing to look after and milk cows fairly well, but they will never take the trouble to learn the secrets of dairy science, or to practise what such knowledge would teach with reference to the care neces'ary to the production of really first-class butter. For such as these the factory is a necessity, which will buy their milk and turn it into butter or cheese We are glad to note from time to tiincthe starting of butter factories as distinguished from cheese factories It would have been a pity to have limited our enterprises of.thislkind.to themanufactureof cheese only, and thus have 10-t the business advantage of a variety of dairy products. Nor do we think the private Hairy farmer need fear the competition of factories in the local market, if he chooses to make a really first class article. For doing this he has some advantages over the factory, inasmuch as the quality of his milk will be more uniform, and he I can make sure of perfect cleanliness in the milking of bis cows, and that tjhey are in good health and well kept to ensure a pure and wholesome milk yield. Now the factory has to take a good deal on trust, but nevertheless the result is a grade of butter infinitely above the average quality of the article hitherto produced by individual country settlers. The Pukekura butter factory near Auck land has done well since it started, although it has lately only been turning out about half a ton of butter a week from 350 gals, of milk. This shortened supply has been caused by the long continued dry weather. The butter made in this factory finds a rapid sale in the local market; indeed a great deal of it is often fold before it i« made. This is simply owing to the fact that dealers know they can depend on the qualit}' being uniformly good. The average yield of cream in the milk supplied is nearly 12 per cent , and any milk snowing on testing less than 10 per cent, of cream is rejected. The process of conversion into butter may be thus briefly described : The milk is first raised in temperature to SOdegs. This is done by means of a 400 gallon vat into which the milk is poured. The vat is enclosed in a wooden casing leaving a space between the two into which steam from a boiler is turned. When of the proper temperature the milk is then dealt with by the separator, one of Burmeister and Wain's Danish machines. The capacity of theseparator enables it fco treat 147 galls. of milk per hour, but 110 gallons is the ordinary quantity put through at the factory. It is claimed that by using these machines not a \v«stige of cream is left in the skim milk, and that they suffer much less from wear and tear than other machines. The drum of (the machine at Pukekura makes 2000 revolutions a minute, turning on a point about a quarter of an inch in diameter. The cream when separated from the milk is treated by the refrigerator to bring it to a proper temperature for the churn, which is large enough to hold 150 gallons. When taken from the«hurn the butter is conveyed to the packing room there to undergo a thorough process of washing and pressing out of moisture, before being placed in a QQY&red underground store room.