would call any time between September 1st and May 1st a good time, and preferable to the hot months of midsummer.

Now, as winter approaches, and you desire to keep up the flow of milk at the least possible cost, the silo is indispensable; for by feeding forty to fifty pounds of good silage per day in addition to good clover hay and a little grain, with a barn at a temperature of from fifty to fifty-five degrees, and water about the same, to which she can have access at all times, a good bed to lay upon, some carding and kind treatment, she will give as much milk in January as in October or November.

This question is often asked: Do the cows milked through winter do as well the next summer? I believe from actual comparison a cow that is kept as I have described will do enough better the next summer to pay for all the extra trouble and cost. The food fed to cows, after keeping the bodies in repair, is either converted into milk or deposited in the form of fat to be used to replenish their own bodies as it may be needed. My cows have been brought to make milk at all times of the year and with but little grain. We are able to produce milk in winter at nearly the same cost as in summer, if the cow is kept in the same temperature in winter as in summer and fed the same food, with only the water dried out. With my way of furnishing water, the results will be nearly the same. But if cows are compelled to stand where the mercury is a little above thirty-two degrees, and keep up the warmth of the body with food and warm the water from ice up to ninety-eight degrees to make this milk, the amount of food consumed makes the profit seem small. As for the health of the cows, it is much better to keep them at about the same temperature and not subjected to the changes consequent to being turned out of a warm barn. Some dairymen think their cows must go out in the cold and walk around to keep healthy, but all the additional health or comfort a cow receives standing out in the cold until the icicles form on her eyes, is to me hardly perceptible. Her hair will be rough, long and coarse, and if she sheds it before the next July she will be fortunate. On the other hand the cow that is kept in a warm barn, and treated as we have described, will have shed her hair long before going to grass, and will go out in condition to repay you for all the care you have given her.

How to Care for Milk.

E. L. HAYNES.

The subject before us is one of the most important factors that enters into the dairy life of the average farmer. It is nearly his whole stock in trade; his success to-day depends upon how skilfully he can manipulate his dairy to increase the flow of milk while he curtails the cost of production. And, as it is the most salable product the farmer produces, it is of real interest to him that the milk be kept in proper condition until its delivery.

The care of milk should begin before it is secreted, for unless you start right you will encounter hidden rocks along the dairy pathway that will make the farmer's ledger show up a trial balance on the debtor side. First of all, he should have the environments of the stable suitable to the wants of the dear old cow that has been the mainstay through all the past; it should be well lighted, well ventilated and with a goodly sup ply of fresh air, free from stable taint, with an excess of litter for bedding, and with nutritious food, the farmer is on the road to success.

But to have all the conditions mentioned progress will be slow, unless the injunction which the Good Book records, “ Man shall live by the sweat of his brow," is transformed from the common idea of physical labor to the divine creation-thought; and when we, by mental exertion, succeed in starting the sweat upon our brows then it is that we progress and our minds are receptive and improvement begins along the dairy highway which leads us into the avenue of the care of milk.

The farmer should be regular about his hours of milking and feeding, be kind and gentle to his stock, and create an affection for them so that, when he commences to milk, his peace of mind will not be harassed by a kick in the short ribs and the loss of a pail of milk and several cuss words. When the affection is complete all is harmony. The udder and bag should be neatly cleaned and the milking done with dry hands. As fast as milk is secured it should be carried out of the stable into the pure air or a room set apart for the milk. It should then be carefully strained through several thicknesses of fine cloth

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to remove at once all dust and filth that have accidentally reached the pail, and then should be aerated either by stirring thoroughly or over any of the new styles of aerators now in use, to set free from the milk the gases, foreign odors and animal heat which it contains, and to gradually lower the temperature to a point where decomposition will be arrested and where the changes will be slow; this point is usually reached when the temperature is 55 to 58 degrees. If the night's milk is to be held over until morning for delivery, the cans of milk should be submerged in spring or ice water to a depth of two inches above the cream line or top of the milk in the can. A very erroneous idea seems to prevail that if the can is onehalf submerged in water it will be O. K.; but such is false, for cream or butter fat, of all the component parts of milk, is the first to sour and should receive the best care. Now the cream that raises on the can during the night above the outside water level will be exposed to the air on top and sides and its temperature will be nearly the same as the surrounding air, and were the night warm enough the cream would be sour and the milk sweet. Hence, you will readily see the urgent necessity of keeping the cream or cream line below the water level on the outside of the can where the changing conditions are normal. Then, when ready for delivery, it should be placed on spring wagons and properly covered to exclude heat and cold, and delivered in such a condition that its temperature has remained the same during its transit. If these suggestions are followed out the milk-shipper, factory and creameryman will have a product that will manufacture up evenly or endure the long journey of 240 miles in a perfect condition.

I wish to impress upon this audience the importance of thor ough aeration of milk, and I wish to be pardoned if too personal in its application, for all my knowledge has been gathered from the use of the large aerator which I placed in my creamery last spring. I will explain its construction and operation for the benefit of those who have never seen one. It consists of sixteen thin copper tubes two inches in diameter, tinned on the outside, and sixteen feet long, arranged one tube above the other, and the ends connected in such a manner that spring or ice water connected to the bottom tube will flow its entire length, come back through the next higher and so on until the top tube is reached, where it is conducted to the drain or back to the ice pool to be chilled again and sent on its circuit route by the use of a rotary pump. The milk is fed into a V-shaped conductor running the entire length of the aerator, in the bottom of which are fine holes that feed the milk into the tubes, where

it spreads out into a thin layer and runs around each tube, where it is ingeniously gathered into small streams where it can be bottled readily by placing bottles in position or the milk can flow into the pan under the aerator and be drawn into cans or vats. You will note that the coldest water is in the bottom tube and the warmest at the top, so when the warm milk flows on it comes in contact with water about 60 degrees, and as it passes down it will leave the last tube at 40 degrees, if ice water is used, thus insuring you a sweet-flavored milk free from foreign odors in the main. Fresh milk will not only contain the animal heat, but such odors as are imparted to it through injudicious feeding, unsavory foods, contamination from the sta ble odor and fine bulk manure that will wend its way through the finest cloth or woven wire into our cans, where it settles, and when retailed in the cities the customers will remark, that the "Farmers are feeding buckwheat bran and it comes through whole." All the above-mentioned odors except the last, are in the form of gases which will readily pass off the milk if aerated while warm. If new milk is allowed to set in a can in a pool or in the atmosphere for a length of time the cream will raise and form a close seal over the milk below, and as these gases try to escape the seal they cool and liquify and immediately unite with the milk globules, and no amount of agitation or aeration will free that milk of odor after such treatment. I noted during the hot weather as the milk of the different dairies flowed over the aerator there was a wide difference in the odors the machine gave off, and a most decidedly cheesy odor would be thrown off the night's milk that had been poorly staid with the night before and whose temperature had been allowed to remain above sixty degrees all night. Such milk would sour in ice-water before twenty-four hours old, and if aerated and iced would last forty-eight hours. My experience from a manufacturer's point of view is this: The farmer should provide means of aeration; the creamerymen cannot afford to do without them, for, during the past year, with its intense heat, I did not have a can of sour milk returned from New York, and in former years my annual loss in that line would buy an aerator each year.

Too much cannot be said about cleanliness in the care of milk. It is the only rule that will aid in the keeping of milk, and all pails and utensils used around milk should be first rinsed in cold water, then washed and thoroughly scalded by water or steam and left in proper condition exposed to air and sunlight.

Again, too often the milking and its care is intrusted to incompetent and uninterested parties and the milk is subjected

to a sink-or-swim treatment, which is equal to caring for itself under all conditions, and when it is delivered to be manufac tured or shipped it is on the fast road to decomposition, which is the fruitful source of many complaints of poor milk, butter and cheese. Yet this is the worst evil a creameryman has to contend with and his only weapons of defense are a vigilant eye and a trained nose. And yet with most careful scrutiny milk will sometimes pass inspection and to all outward appearances be right, and when the crucial test is applied of holding it for forty-eight to fifty-six hours we discover taints have grown until our milk is off flavor and rejected.

And, now, in closing: Could we by any simple process exclude micro-organisms from all milk our talk would be rounded out and the care of milk solved.