CHAPTER II. PRODUCTION OF MILK.
The requisites of good milk have been so frequently and fully discussed, that we need not more than briefly advert to them now. The importance of good milk, for either cheese or butter, will be conceded, and therefore the question need not be argued.
The first requisites of good milk are good cows. But these will disappoint their owners if they have not good keep. Plenty of good clean hay and pure water, with warm quarters, are indispensable. The old-fashioned method of allowing cows, or other cattle, to weather all kinds of storms, with a snow-bank for a bed at night, we believe is pretty effectually done away with. It has been found that it does not pay. It is not yet quite so universally admitted that generous feeding is equally advantageous, nor that a warm stable is as much an advance on an open, cold one, where the cows stand and shiver throughout the twenty-four hours, as a common shelter is an improvement on no shelter. Yet, a warm stable, which may be had for a small expense, is decided economy, in the saving of food, as well as a comfort to the cows; and generous feeding will be found a profitable investment, both by the increased flow of milk and by its increased richness. A poorly-kept cow will give less milk than a well-kept one, and its poorer quality will be more manifest than the diminution in quantity. When turned out to grass, if the feed should prove good, it will take the cow weeks to build up her system and get in the condition she should have been in at the start; and though the quantity and quality of her milk will improve, she will reach the time when the mess naturally begins to shrink before she will have thoroughly recuperated. After this, the richness of the milk will probably be satisfactory. But in case the season should open dry and cold, so that the grass starts slowly, and is then followed by the hot dry weather of July and August, as is not unfrequently the case, a cow that starts "spring poor" will scarcely get in good condition before the grass is nipped by the fall frosts and it becomes necessary to begin to fodder.
There is a marked difference in the quality of the messes of milk delivered at a cheese-factory. The use of the lactometer and cream-gauges will show this. It will be an interesting experiment, for cheese-makers who never tried it, to test in this way the quality of the milk delivered by the different patrons, and then ascertain the style in which each keeps his cows, the character of the pastures of each, the kind of water which the pastures afford—whether brook, river, swamp or spring—and to note any other facts and conditions which may be apparent or may suggest themselves. It will be found, we think, that bad wintering and poor pastures have as much or more to do than anything else with the production of poor milk. No breed of cows nor selection of a dairy can wholly counteract these evils. The yield of milk will undoubtedly be greater and better with some cows than with others; and so with naturally good cows, good wintering and pasturing will show quite as marked improvements.
We have in our mind an instance where, at the opening of a cheese-factory, only a few of the farmers, having the largest dairies, delivered milk. They were all men who fed their cows well during the winter, and gave them meal before and after coming in. The result was an astonishingly large yield of cheese from milk at that season of the year. But as the messes increased, and milk from dairies poorly-kept came in, the yield of cheese in proportion to the number of pounds of milk steadily diminished. The lactometer and cream-gauges showed that the poorest milk came from the poorest-kept cows.
The forepart of the season proved a cold and wet one, which made the grass more juicy and less nutritious. This, with the accidental or intentional watering which the milk got from the rain falling in the cans, either at home or on the road, was also believed to decrease the yield of cheese. It appeared that milk coming long distances through the rain, other things being equal, showed more water than that brought short distances. Manifestly, some sort of shelter to the cans should be devised, to be used both at home and on the road, during rainy weather—and the same for keeping off the rays of the sun, in fair weather, is equally desirable.
All through the season, in the instance referred to, there was a marked difference in the quality of the milk of the well-kept and of the poorly-kept dairies. Swampy pastures also seemed to impoverish the milk. Those pastures that were dry, with pure water accessible, appeared to produce the richest milk. While the milk of the best dairies, on being tested, would indicate a yield of a pound of cheese to eight or nine pounds of milk, the milk of others would not yield a pound of cheese to less than eleven or twelve pounds of milk. The average number of pounds of milk for a pound of cheese, during the season, was about 9.9.