We notice that, in some localities, the patrons of the cheese factory are very much interested in the question of the value of whey for feeding purposes—some going so far as to assert that what is left of milk in cheese making is as valuable as what is removed! This is a startling assertion, and, if true, would convict our dairymen of a vast amount of stupid waste. Is it true? Let us try to get at the facts of the case by a direct, common-sense investigation of it.
COMPOSITION OF MILK.
We will begin with the composition of milk. From hundreds of German analyses, ranging from 81.30 to 91.50 parts of water, we take a fair average analysis, which we think will do justice to the mixed milk of our best cheese factories:
| Water | 87.18 | Sugar | 4.21 | ||
| Caseine | 4.21 | Ash | .60 | ||
| Albumen | .55 | ———— | |||
| Fat | 3.24 | Total | 99.99 |
WHAT IS TAKEN OUT BY CHEESE MAKING.
Now, in making cheese, what follows? We ought to secure all the caseine, but we do not quite. There is a small waste. We loose all, or nearly all, of the albumen. We leave in the whey most of the sugar, if we do not convert it into acid before getting rid of the whey, in which case we may have an injurious amount of the acid in the curd, besides dissolving and washing out nearly all the ash, which is composed of phosphates, principally of iron, magnesia and lime. These are changed into lactates, leaving the phosphoric acid free—not a very good food for anything but rats. We ought to save nearly or quite all the ash—the phosphates. But by the ordinary process of cheese making, these are nearly all lost, as is shown by the analyses of whey, which probably accounts for the low estimate in the popular mind of the value of cheese as food, it being rated at one-half the value that it would have were the phosphates all retained. But, four-fifths of the nitrogenous and muscle-making material has been removed, and also nine-tenths of the fat, which is heat producing and some say furnishes motor power. We have retained in the cheese 5.84 of the 12.82 parts of solids, leaving 5.98 parts, 4.21 parts of which are sugar and not wanted in the cheese, or, at most, only a fraction of it. We leave less than one part of the albuminous and caseous matter, which is the most valuable, and only one-third of one part of fat. So there is less than one part of solids left besides sugar, and the rest of the whey is water.
COMPOSITION OF WHEY.
What is whey, then, but sweetened water, using sugar of a very low sweetening quality, with a fraction of albuminous matter and ash in it? Again, by the so-called "sweet" process, which retains all, or nearly all, the phosphates in the cheese, the whey is made still poorer by analysis. Only the sugar and a fraction of the albuminous matter, not coagulated by rennet, is left in the whey; and the amount of sugar in milk varies considerably, ranging, in a large number of German analyses, from 3.0 to 5.48 per cent. of sugar. But let us more closely examine the composition of whey. An average of eighteen analyses made by Voelcker is as follows:
| Water | 93.02 | Sugar | } | 4.99 | |
| Nitrogenous matter | .96 | Lactic acid | |||
| Fat | .33 | —— | |||
| Ash | .70 | Total | 100.00 |
POOR STUFF.