ABOUT TESTING MILK.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2626, 27 February 1894, Page 3

ABOUT TESTING MILK.

The value of a cow tor dairy purposes depends upon several factors, the two moßt important of which are the quantity and the quality of the milk. We, have some cows at this station that give milk which contains about 3 per cent. fat. Such cows must give about thirty-three pounds of milk to make a pound of butter. We have others that run 5 per cent, fat, in which cases twenty pounds will make a pound of butter. After giving milk several months these rich cows sometimes run up to 7 per cent, fat, in which case about fourteen pounds of milk will make one pound of butter. With this knowledge of the amount of fat in milk we have only to go to the records of milking to learn the standing of each cow. I can assure the reader that the 3 per cent, cows would have gone long ago.had we not wished to keep them for the purpose of studying some features of their milk that the milk from the other cows did not possess. I do not wish to be understood as insisting that the richest milk is always the cheapest. Some oows will give very rich milk, but in such small quantity that they are not profitable, while a cow giving 3 per cent, milk may be one of the most profitable on the farm. It does not matter whether the milk is of rich or medium quality so long as the total amount of fat produced is entirely satis factory. A cow must give a large amount of butter for the year if she is to return any profits for feed and keep. "With the methods of testing milk now before the public there is no reason why the dairyman should not know the relative value of all the cows in his herd. It does not seem to T)e necessary that each man should own a iesting apparatus; he can take a sample of milk and have the factory make a test for a small fee. A factory using the Badcock test could well afford to make the fat determinations for its patrons for five cents each. But unless we remember that the fat test is only one of two figures which must be multiplied together to get the true result, we may do the cow rank injustice. To get the other figure the dairyman must weigh the milk from his cows. To do this a spring balance can be purchased for a dollar or two and hung up in the dairy barn, and the milk can bo weighed thereon daily; or if this be too much labour let the milk be weighed once a week, and on the. same days always, and careful record made. A sheet of brown manilla paper cau be ruled with a lead pencil in a few minutes and tacked upon a'board with a hole at the top, which can be hung upon a nail close by the scales. The cows can be named or numbered, and the amount of milk set in the appropriate place with yery little trouble. I know that n any will say that this is too much trouble, but nothing is too much trouble which helps a man about his business. Nothing will open the dairyman's eye* more than weighing the milk and having these analy-i3 made Nine times out r.i' ten, after such an examination, there will be 'some cows for sale at any price to th* local stock buyer.—Experiment Station Bulletin.

Mr Josiah OldQeld, in the Vegetarian, explains why people go to sleep so often ill church. No blame must henceforth be attached to the gentleman in the pulpit, for it is not a tedious sermon or droning voice, which is responsible for inclination to slumber. The cause crop. l tip in our old friend Hypnotism, and the doothing effect is obtained by the iteration of sounds long familiar to the ear. It itthis iteration that makes us sleepy, not she sermon—as it has been hitherto commonly supposed.