The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1897-02-26
FARMERS AND MECHANICS.
Practical Education at the Ore
gon Agricultural College.

1ne ag1IdtlOn throughout OIc-
gon relative to the establishment
of creameries makes at this time
an article descriptive of the Ore
gon Agricultural College dairy
department of especial interest.
It is connected with the depart
ment of agriculture of the in
stitution and its course Of study
and practical work in butter.
making, under the direction OF
Prof. F. L. Kent, have had the
effect of making the agricultural
course very popular among stu
dents.
The dairy department was es-
tablished by the board of regents
at their annual meeting i'll June,
1895. During the summer va
cation following, dairy build
ing was erected and fitted up
with the necessary apparatus,
and about Nov. Ist, 1895, the
manufacture of butter was com
menced.
+ The purpose of the board in
establishing this department was
particularly to give instruction
in private or farm dairying, al
though the apparatus used i'll
the dairy building very conn-
pletely illustrates the apparatus
used in large creameries, but, of
course, OIL a smaller scale. The
milk supply is mainly obtained
from the station herd Of about
90 cows, several of which are
registered Jerseys. There is
one Holstein in the herd
that holds a milk record
for the year 1896, of
9, 200 pounds of milk, or but
ter yield for the year of about $40
pounds.
About 80 pounds of milk per
day is received from a farmer
living in the vicinity of the COL
lege and more milk might be
easily obtained, but it is not the
purpose of the management to
conduct a commercial creamery.
The butter output of the dairy,
which is of excellent quality, is
disposed of to the college board
ing halls at the market price of
frst-class butter.
The process of converting the
milk into butter is the same as is
used by nearly all modern cream
cries and progressive private
dairymen. The milk and cream
are separated by means of the
centrifugal separator, a machine
consisting essentially of a steel
bowl making about E, 900 revolu-
tions per minnie and having an
inlet for the new milk and outlets,
for the cream and skinned milk.
Any one who has seen one of
these bowls cleaned after a run
of an hour or more, at once re-
alizes the advantages of the cream
separator from sanitary stand
point, but the chief advantage
possessed by the cream separator
is the saving of butter fat result
ing from its use.
A separator, properly handled,
seldom leaves more than o.ie-
tenth OF one per cent. of fat in
the skim milk, or in other words,
not more than about one-fortieth
of the amount of fat present in
the milk before being run
through the machine. On the
other hand, tests of several SAM
plies Of skim milk obtained from
farmers living in the vicinity of
Corvallis have shown a loss of
from one-sixth to one-fourth of
the fat in the milk when drawn
from the COW.
The proper time to separate
the milk and cream is as soon as
possible after the milking is
done, but it is the practice at the
college to separate the nights
milk and the next mornings
milk at the same time. The
cl1urning is done on alternate
days, hence some of the cream
stands 48 hours and some of it
only "a hours. When put into
the churn, the cream is quite
thick and has a pleasant, acid
taste. The churn used is of the
trunk type and the churning con-
tinues until the granules of but
ter are about the size of halt
grain of wheat. The butter-
milk is then drawn off and the
butter is washed twice with cold
water. It is then placed on the
worker, salted at the rate. of one
ounce of salt to one pound of
butter, and worked for about FIVE
minutes. The butter is then
nodded into two-pound blocks
and wrapped in parchment pa
per.
The course of instruction in
this department is very thorough.
1t includes practical work in
milk testing and butter making, |
and class room work in connec-