Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1876-02-02
Feeding for Butter or Cheese.

1t is not uncommon for agricultural edi-
tors to receive letters enquiring what is the
best feed to give cows to promote the pro
duction of butter, or Of cheese, according to
the speciality in which the writers are en-.
gagged.
1t was for a considerable time believed,
by scientific and practical men alike, that
starchy, saceharine and oily food has a tend
ency to increase the proportion Of butter in
a cows milk, while heterogeneous feed such
as bran aud pea-mcal, would have the effect
to increase the proportion Of casein, the
cheese element But experiments in this
direction soon demonstrated that the theory
would not work. Butter or cheese could not
be produced to order in this way. Science
then resorted to analysis to find out the rea-
son, and it was discovered that every COW
has a milk schedule of her own, from which
she does not vary-that she is born butter
COW or a cheese COW. SO to speak, and that
no variation Of feed will vary the proportion
Of the constituents Of her milk more than a
trihe If you feed her an exccss of the fat
elements, it viii not appear in more cream,
but will be stored up as tallow if more nj
trogen, it will nourish the muscular system,
or pass of in the excretions, but will not APP
pear in the milk as an enlarged proportion
of casein.
The facts above stated, however, do not
preclude the possibility Of increasing, by in
creased nutrition, the amount of both butter
and cheese, in like proportion, in a cows
milk That is, if COW has been giving
milk that yielded one pound Of butter to
twenty-four pounds of milk, and one pound
of cheese to twelve pounds Of milk, she
may, by better feed, be made 10 produce say
one pound of butter to twenty pounds, and
one pound of cheese to ten pounds Of milk.
These constituents Of the milk can be in
creased together the milk can be made
richer, but the butter cannot be increased
and the cheese continue stationary, nor rice
versa.
A "butter COW is a COW whose natural
Characteristic as a mixer is 10 produce milk
proportionally richer in cream than in ca
sein a cheese cow" on the other hand, is
one whose milk is Gaseous, rather than buty-
raceous. Cows have to be graded, therefore,
by this standard, but when you have Sc
lected your herd of butter cows or cheese
COWS, and seek to get the best possible yield
from them by good keep and care, you will
find that as the butter of the butter COW in
creases in the milk, the cheese increases with
it, and as the cheese of the cheese COW in
creases, so also will the butter. Certain
breeds are better iittod for cheese, and it is
observable that these breeds are apt to be
deep mixers. Yet the deep mixers are not
invariably cheese cows, and we have to make
a sub-class of them, under the head milk
mems cows" which give great messes of
watery milk, poor alike in butter and cheese.
For the farm dairy where cheese is made,
it is important to discriminate between the
true cheese cows and the milkmen's cows and
TO exclude the latter but when the milk is
sold to the cheese factory, under the present
system, there is no need of cullng out the
deep-mlkers of poor milk since at the cheese
factory pound Of milk is a pound of milk,
regardless of quality.
1t is rather a curious fact, only lately
brought into notice in consequence of the
establishment of cheese factories in the vi
cinity OF Jersey herds, that jersey milk is
good for cheese as well as butter. Two fac
tories in Maine, receiving largely of Jersey
and grade Jersey milk, report a yield in one
of a pound of cheese to eight and seven one
hundredths pounds of milk, aud in the other
of one pound TO much less than ten pounds.
But it would evidently be very bad policy to
send such milk as this to factory where
common milk is received, all to share and
share alike in the returns for cheese. If
Jerseys are TO he used for cheese-making, it
ought TO be in Jersey factory exclusively,
and such a factory ought also to make but
ter by partial skimming, since it would be
impossible TO retain all the butter in the
cheese, The Jersey cheese is said to be of
very high quality, and it may be that, manu-
featured with extra care, it might be mar
keted, like Jersey butter, at an extra price.