DAIRYING. The importance of the dairy interest of the United States, and the magnitude it has assumed within the last ten years, the con stant multiplication of factories for the manufac ture of butter and cheese, especially in the West, and the constant interest in new processes for cheapening production, is one of the many aston ishing developments in American industries. Under the old system of making cheese, scarcely two were alike in texture, quality, or flavor. Now, in well ordered factories, the cheeses are not only uniform, but may he produced of any flavor and ripeness demanded. This is entirely due to the perfect system adopted, not only in the feed.
ing and management of the cows, but especially in the precise management and manipulation of the milk and curd, the pressing and curing of the cheese, and packing it for sale. (See article Cheese ) In the manufacture of butter the same precise care is given. The milk must be kept scrupulously from all suspicion of taint, from bad odors. It must be kept at a low and equable temperature, until the cream is raised. The cream must be properly ripened, churned at a proper temperature, carefully worked and salted and packed in suitable packages, according to the season and also the particular market for which it is intended and, until sold, kept at a low tem perature, and from contact with air; care also must be taken that the cream is properly churned. (See article Churning.) In this way the intelli gent dairyman makes a uniform article of butter, no matter what the season, and an article which commands the highest price in any market in which it is sold. (See article Butter.) To accom plish all this, a suitable dairy building must be provided, containing all modern conveniences, including ice and pure water. (See article Dairy Buildings.) Cold springs are not now so much sought by the dairyman as formerly. Springs are especially scarce in the West; but nature has given every other requisite, cheap fuel, cheap grain, and flush pasturage Ice supplies have superseded the need of very cold springs, and that cheaply. (See article Ice House.) In all we have said, and equally important, the dairy cow will be found of the first importance. In this progressive age no man can succeed in dairying with a lot of cows picked up at random and of mixed breeds, or of no particular breed. There are cows especially adapted to the dairy, just as there are cattle adapted to the production of beef or for labor. (See article Dairy Cows.) Again the question of grasses comes in. This also is one among the very important questions to be con sidered. Without grasses, sweet, succulent, and that shall follow the season in succession, the dairyman can not hope to compete with his more practical, if not more intelligent, neigh bor, who has paid due attention to this key stone of dairying, grass. With a succession of sweet, succulent grasses from spring to fall, sup plemented with proper forage plants during the months of late July and August, plenty of good clover, timothy, orchard grass, and red top for winter feeding, and an abundance of ground grain, to be used both during the drought of summer, and during the winter, and proper implements, utensils and buildings, we have the foundation laid for making money, in one of the best paying branches of agriculture. (See arti cles Hay and Forage Plants ) The United States is producing annually 750,000 tons of butter, of which we exported 11,000 tons during the year 1879; and 100,000 tons of cheese, of which we exported 61,000 tons during the year 1879. In 1880 the export of butter was about 20,000 tons, and of cheese, nearly 72,000 tons. Even in the matter of salt, with whin to season the butter and cheese, this is of such magnitude that great firms of salt dealers, both English and American, eagerly compete for the dairy demand in:salt. Relating to the competition of theWest, in dairy products, an intelligent dairyman of New York lately expressed himself as follows: A few years ago, when New York State furnished nearly the entire trade with butter and cheese, this old-fashioned custom of holding was neces sary; but of late years a mighty enemy has risen up in the West, outstripping and surprising us all. Butter and cheese of fine quality is now laid down in our market, from Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Nebraska, and the entire Northwest, in better order than from New York State by express. The western wide awake men meet our market by forwarding their butter while it is fresh ; and this by a creamery system of manufacturing fine butter all winter long, having their cows come in during the fall and winter for that purpose. The magnitude of the butter and cheese trade may be one cause of the trouble, but if the larger proportion of it was properly manufactured and marketed,. the greater trouble would be avoided, for we are developing an almost unlimited market for American fine butter and cheese. Although we have increased the annual production of butter from 600,000,000 pounds to 1,500,000,000 pounds, and of cheese from 150,000,000 pounds to 350,000,000 pounds, in the last eighteen years, we find ourselves only at the threshold of our responsibilities and oppor tunities, for the vast population of this country must be mainly cared for by the development of its agricultural resources. This branch of agri culture shows, within the last twenty years, an export of cheese alone of 1,163,000,000 pounds, and a total value of exported butter and cheese of $185,000,000. During the last ten years 885,000,000 pounds of cheese have been shipped abroad. Thus it will be seen that the dairying interest is one of vast and increasing magnitude. Its rapid growth in the East will be equaled and surpassed in many Western States adapted to dairy products. In 1840, in the great dairying State of New York, the entire dairy product, including milk, butter, and cheese, in value amounted to a little less than ten and a half million dollars, and in all the States to about thirty-four millions; but in 1869, according to the census of 1870, the milk and butter pro duce in New York alone reached the value of fifty-seven millions, and, including milk, one hundred millions. But in the city of New York, in 1876, the total value of milk, butter, and cheese received, according to the daily reports of the Board of Trade, was over fifty-five and a half millions. Coming westward, we find that, in the single dairy product of cheese, the State of Illinois advanced her yield seven-fold between 1870 and 1874. In 1869 Commissioner D. A. Wells estimated the value of the dairies of the United States at $400,000,000. In a paper read before the National Agricultural Congress at Philadelphia, in 1876, Prof. X. A. Willard thought it much within the truth to state the value of the products of the farm dairies for that year at $600,000,000, illustrating these figures by the comparison that in 1860 the total 'products arising from agriculture in the United States was estimated at $1,800,000,000; so that the dairy farms of the United States in 1876 produced a sum equal to one third the value of the entire productions of agriculture, in all its branches, in 1860. The butter product of the United States at this time may safely be put at 1,000,000,000 pounds, and that of cheese at 300,000,000. The
exports of dairy products iu 1876 were: butter; 10,593,968 pounds, value, $2,230,469; cheese, 104,041,108 pounds, value, $14,069,391; con densed milk, $118,590, as against the following in 1870 ; butter, 2,019,288 pounds, value, $592, 229; cheese, 57,296,227 pounds, value, $8,881, 34; condensed milk, none. In relation to the factory season, New York statistics contain the most ample and full reports of 127 butter and -cheese factories which show the average length of the New York factory season of 1874 to be 6.24 months, if estimated from the whole number of -cows, and 6.44 months, if only the average num ber is taken into account. Average number of cows for the season per factory, 311; lowest number reported by any one factory, 55; highest cumber, 800. Average yield of milk per cow for the factory season, 3,241 pounds, or 377 gal lons. Excepting a few factories, which made considerable amounts of butter as well as cheese, 112 reports show an average of 331 pounds of -cheese per cow, and 9.82 pounds of milk required for one pound of cured cheese. Fifty seven factory reports give, each, statistics of the best and of the poorest dairy for the season. These reports show an average season of 6.5 months. Average net receipts by patrons per 100 pounds -of milk, $1,229, or about 2.63 cents per quart ; per cow, $40.33, showing 382 gallons of milk per cow. Best dairies, average net receipt per cow by patrons, $52.99, showing 501 gallons of milk per cow. Poorest dairies, average net receipt per cow, $30.63, showing 290 gallons per cow. Excess of yield per cow of the best dairies over that of the poorest dairies, 211 gallons, or .about seventy-three per cent. The following tabulated statement will show the exports of dairy products from the United States, from 1790 to, and including 1878, and the value thereof : Mr. J. M. Smith, of Wisconsin, at the session of the Northwestern Dairymen's Association in 1878, held the following in relation to cooling milk, and the manufacture of butter and cheese: 'The practical cheese maker who succeeds in making a cheese that is at once firm, soft, mild, and entirely sweet, rich and meaty—one that has these properties in such excellence that it can be on another cheese under the hand like immelted butter—knows, if he has taken note of the facts, that that kind of a cheese was made when the coldness of the weather, or the careful nes, of his patrons, gave him a vat of milk that was sound and cool, and free from any manifest approach to acidity. Whatever science or reck lessness may assert can be achieved in making such a kind of cheese from milk not kept so cold, or from that perceptibly acid to the ordi nary senses of smell and taste, I know that a cheese maker of even limited experience can make a good cheese every time from the former named kind of milk ; while I have yet to learn and be convinced that a philosopher, a chemist, a scholar and experienced cheese maker combined can make such a, cheese from milk that has deteriorated to perceptible acidity. If like causes produce like effects in the cheese vat as well as elsewhere, (and they do) then I argue that if the maximum of excellence is attained by the proper manipulation of good cooled milk, and defeat, manifest and disgraceful, accompanies the manufacture of sour milk, then approximate success or failure will show the per cent. of each, to good judges, just in proportion as the milk has progressed in acidity before coagulation is effected. The per cent. of variation is not so plainly discernible, as the condition of the mer cury is on the scale of the thermometer, and it has been made, not by the cheese maker alone, but by the atmosphere and the acts of the patron. The practical, educated butter maker knows that as soon as milk sours the raising of cream is at once checked and, we may safely say, sub stantially stopped. If left to acidify by not being cooled when first drawn from the cow, the "acid will devour the cream, and a per cent. of loss of butter is the certain consequence. By experi ment, made in warm weather, I learned that mixed night's and morning's milk plunged in water at 60° made about one pound of butter per 100 pounds of milk less than that plunged in iced water at 40°, and that the milk of the former was sour next morning, and unfit for making skimmed-milk cheese—while the latter was to smell and taste yet sweet. By another experiment, made also in warm weather, it was shown that the night's milk delivered next morn ing, taken care of in the night in the usual way, though plunged in an ice-bath as soon as received, would sour by 3 p. m. of the day of delivery, while the morning's milk of the same day, put in the same ice-bath, would be sweet forty-eight hours after delivery. From this I saw that to keep milk sweet long enough to get the butter all out of it, it is necessary to rapidly cool it immediately after being drawn. Now, if the causes that produce acidity have the effect to so change the weight of butter that can be made from a given weight of milk, then the same cause, (absence of cream) if the milk is used to make cheese, will modify the character of your cheese and make it approximately fancy, or decidedly of the white oak variety, according as the boss skimmer of the age—acid—has been permitted to ravage the milk, either by the act of the patron or the tardy manipulations of the cheese maker. These facts and experiences lead direct to conclusions essential to be observed in the care of milk by the patron, and the manu facture of it after delivery in the vat. The pat ron is most vitally interested, and therefore he ought to have his ears wide open to a proclama tion of the fact—which fact is, that cents per hundred pounds for his milk is intimately depen dent upon .the rapid cooling of his night's milk during the warm weather. This is true, whether he does it himself or has it clone for him by the maker at the factory. To cool on the farm is the prevailing custom, at least in the West, and so I address myself to urging that it be done there more thoroughly. To give some known reasons of failure, and what would inure surely secure the end sought—One of the chief reasons of failure is the ignorance or carelessness of patrons, or a combination of both. Sometimes the ignorance is so dense that precept upon pre cept will not penetrate the cranium. The loss of a can of milk, occasionally, will aid materially in the development of such. When that is the case, the cheese maker is fortunate. It is not that kind of milk that harms him, for he does not use it. It is the partially acid milk that gets into the vat that takes the gilt edge off his cheese. Whatever the magnitude of the dairy interests, as has been shown in this article, and the extracts given, there is still room for expansion. In fact there would seem to be little fear that for some time the production of really fine butter and cheese will hold high prices, at least for years to come. Nevertheless, what is known as grease butter, and skim cheese, can not expect even to hold its own. People will eat sweet lard in pref erence to rancid butter, and will go without cheese rather than attempt the toughness of white oak cheese.