I can prove to you from experiments published in Henry & Morrison’s “Feeds and Feeding” that skim milk is worth only $.08 a hundred pounds when corn meal is worth $1.00 a hundred, and I can prove that skim milk is worth $.31 a hundred pounds when corn meal is worth $1.00 a hundred. In fact when an experimenter undertakes to prove a thing he has very easy sailing if he can line up conditions to suit the proposition he intends to prove. The trouble with most experiments on this subject has been that they are apparently planned to be used as arguments for the purpose of increasing the feeding of skim milk and they do not undertake to solve the real question involved.
Every one knows that corn alone is too unbalanced a ration to feed to hogs profitably. Where it is endeavored to show that skim milk has a very high value, one bunch of hogs is fed corn alone, and to compare with it another bunch is fed corn and a small amount of skim milk. Let those who are satisfied with the information that can be obtained by such an experiment use it and I will have no dispute with them. But for most of us the question is whether we should feed alfalfa to the cow and the cow’s milk to the pig or let the pig eat his own alfalfa. A hog’s ration may be balanced with alfalfa hay or with alfalfa or rape pasture. The question is whether milk and corn makes as cheap a gain as alfalfa and corn. It is very difficult to find experiments that answer this question and it is the most practical one in the world. If it is good sense to use the cost of producing pork on dry corn alone as the basis of getting at the value of milk, it is also good sense to use skim milk alone as the basis of figuring the value of grain. In an experiment published by Henry & Morrison on page 597, where little pigs weighing only twenty-five pounds were used and which are capable of making cheaper gains on milk than older hogs because they have smaller bodies to maintain, it took 2,739 pounds of skim milk to make one hundred pounds of gain. But where 233 pounds of grain were fed with 935 pounds of skim milk there was also a gain of one hundred pounds. Figuring now as they do who would set the value of milk by the cost of feeding dry grain, we will use skim milk as a basis of figuring. If skim milk is worth $.30 a hundred, corn is worth $2.32 a hundred. This is the same line of reasoning as is used when in an experiment reported on page 598, if corn is worth $.01 a pound we find that skim milk is worth $.30 a hundred. All they prove is that a hog must have something besides corn or milk. Corn is the cheapest hog feed but it is too unbalanced a diet to get the best results when fed alone. A small amount of skim milk or something else will balance the diet. According to reports published by Henry & Morrison on page 598 it will be noticed that 585 pounds of skim milk reduced the amount of grain required to produce 100 lb. growth by 179 pounds. If corn is worth $.01 a pound and we figure on that basis, skim milk is worth $.31 a hundred pounds. But notice what happens when the amount of skim milk is increased beyond what is needed to supply the elements which corn lacks. When the amount of skim milk is increased by 463 pounds more, the amount of corn meal eaten was only reduced by 56 pounds, so that for the first 585 pounds the farmer was getting $.31 but for the next 463 pounds he was getting only $.12 a hundred pounds, and when the skim milk was again increased by 849 pounds the amount of corn meal required was only reduced 71 pounds and this figures down the last batch of skim to only about $.08 per hundred pounds. These experiments prove that we must keep somewhere near a balanced ration but do not prove anything regarding a definite value of skim as a feed.
What your skim milk is worth on the farm depends altogether on how much it is needed to balance the diet in hog feeding operations. It is of much more value for little pigs than for larger hogs that are more capable of digesting grasses. Professor Henry says, “Pigs fed skim milk and grain gained nothing from pasture. Grazing stimulates the appetites of pigs getting grain but no milk and they eat more grain and make larger and more economical gains.” So we see that pigs will pass up pasture for milk and that when milk is fed to pigs on pasture it replaces the use of pasture so that it does not do much good to pasture hogs that are fed milk. Experiments reported on page 614 show that pigs on alfalfa pasture require 344 pounds of grain to gain one hundred pounds and that on rape pasture only 340 pounds are required.
Different experiments always vary slightly as to the amount of grain required to make a certain growth. But taking the most advantageous ration that we can prepare with milk and corn as shown by these experiments, we may conclude that something like 300 pounds of grain and 500 pounds of milk will make one hundred pounds of growth on one hundred pound hogs, and that about 350 pounds of grain fed to hogs on pasture will make the same amount of growth. Let each farmer figure out what pasture and grain cost him and he can get approximately the real value of skim milk. For large hogs milk will be worth less than here shown. For smaller hogs it will be worth more.
It may be interesting to know the cost per pound of skim milk solids figured at different prices, but the chemical analysis we are not considering. One hundred pounds of milk usually contains about 9.25 pounds of solids. If 100 pounds of skim milk is worth $.20, one pound of dry matter would be worth $.0216 and a ton would be worth $43.20. At $.40 a hundred, one pound of dry matter would be worth $.0432 and a ton would be worth $86.40. At $.50 a hundred, one pound of dry matter would cost $.0540 and one ton cost $108.00.
Whey. The average composition of whey is about as follows: water 93.12%, and total solids 6.88%. Of the total solids there are about .27% fat, .81% nitrogenous substances and 5.80% sugar, ash, etc. For pigs whey has a feeding value about half that of skim milk.
CHAPTER X.
MARKET MILK
Weight of Milk. The weight of milk varies slightly with the temperature and also because of the difference in the amount of solids it contains. An average gallon of milk at 60 degrees weighs 8.6 pounds. A ten-gallon can filled to the lid should weigh 86 pounds.
A can large enough to hold 100 pounds of water would hold 103.2 pounds of average milk at 60 degrees, 103.6 pounds of skim milk, or 90 pounds of pure butterfat. Cream weighs less than water. The butterfat in milk is in the form of little particles or globules, which float around in the milk. In Holstein milk they are small, in Jersey milk they are larger. Cream is simply milk containing a large number of particles of fat.
Legal Requirements. The law requires market milk to test not less than 3% butterfat. Milk containing 3% butterfat but less than 11¹⁄₂% total solids is usually considered watered milk. We determine fat content by Babcock test and the solids-not-fat by an instrument called the lactometer, which is simply an accurate means of determining the weight of milk.