MILK-GIVING COWS
There are a number of animals from which men get milk, but chief of all these is the cow. Those are breeds of cows which are kept only for milk-giving and which have been brought to yield so much and such rich milk as to make them of great value. In all history we read of the milkmaid, the girl whose duty it is to milk the cows, one of the chief duties on a farm. Nowadays we do not hear so much about the milkmaid. She has for the most part gone out of business.
No doubt, many of my young friends have seen how milking is done, the cow with its full udders, the white stream of milk which flows from the teats when pressed, and the large quantity of this rich fluid which some cows will give. Perhaps some of you may have tried the art yourselves, but it is an art that needs to be learned, and many cows will not yield their milk to awkward fingers. Some of them, indeed, when they do not like the milker, will kick over the full bucket and now and then the milker with it.
In some way the cow turns part of the grass she eats into this rich fluid, so useful to mankind, not only as a drink, but for the butter and cheese it yields. Nature provides milk to all animals of the class known as mammals as food for their young, but by long usage the cow has been brought to give milk at all times and thus helps to feed her keepers as well as her calves.
I hardly need tell you that milk is a white fluid in which float small globes of fat. This fat is the butter of which we make so much use. If the milk is let stand, the butter floats to the top and is skimmed off in a rich fluid we call cream. By various modes of churning the butter is got out of the cream, leaving a thin liquid behind called buttermilk.
Butter is not the only thing got from milk. Cheese is another product of much use. It is made from the solid parts of the milk. When an acid, or a substance called rennet, which is obtained from the calf's stomach, is put into the milk, the solids come together in a soft, white jelly, leaving a greenish, watery liquid called whey. It is from this jelly, or curd, that cheese is made by pressing out the whey and leaving a hard, solid mass. There are many ways of making cheese and many different kinds of cheese, often so unlike that we can scarcely think they came from the same source.
Back to the Pasture After the Milking
Now let me say something about the various breeds of milk-giving or dairy cows. They differ very much. Some give a great deal of milk; some much less. There are cows that have given as much as twenty-four quarts of milk a day. Think of six gallons from one cow in one day, enough to fill a vessel of large size! Others may give only ten quarts or even less.