Connecticut western news., 1902-05-22
INCREASING BUTTER FAT.
The Kind of Feed Given Hasn't Any,
 thing to Do With 1t.

The Kind of Feed Given Hasn't Any
 thing to Do With 1t.
 A correspondent writes to Dairy and Creamery to ask how he can so feed his cows that their milk will be richer in butter fat. The old belief that COWS will produce milk rich or poor in but ter fat according to the feed they are given has strong hold in this country. This belief led to the saying, Nothing comes from a cows teats that has not gone into her mouth" While this is true in every sense of the word, long continued and careful experiments nave proved that except within very narrow bounds 1t is impossible to i'm prove the quality of the milk of COW by feeding her.
 The quality of the milk is a charac- teristic of the individual COW. She gives milk that Is rich or poor in butter fat from some natural tendency which Is not well understood. This tendency Is transmittable to her descendants, and by careful selection it Is possible to improve the average quality of the milk from a herd of cows to a wonder ful degree.
 Given q COW that naturally gives good milk-that rich in butter fat-and breed her to a bull that is from a COW that gives good milk. and the progeny Is likely to be better than the dam, al- though this is not invariably the case. Butter fat does not differ from tallow In any essential way. It is animal fat and is elaborated from the feed given the COW that produced the milk from | which 1t is separated. One COW will I turn the fat in her feed to butter fat, and another will store 1t up in her body. The one COW will be a good but ter maker and the other a poor one. 1t Is now pretty generally conceded that milk is elaborated largely during the process of milking. That 1t is sep | grated from the blood in some way is | certain. Feed a COW more of the ele- ments that go into the composition of | milk, and she will become fat. The COW that gives poor milk will fatten much easier than the one that gives rich I milk. According to recent exhaustive ex- l periments made by Professor Haecker, it does not make much difference what is fed to d COW if she is given a plenti- ful supply of sound feed. Give a COW all she needs of sound forage and grain, and she will produce to the ut most possible limit butter fat or tallow If she turns her feed into milk and but ter fat, she Is good COW. If she turns It into tallow, she is poor COW from the dairyman's standpoint.
 If our correspondent will follow this plan, he will get more butter fat from his cows, but not richer milk. His cows will give more milk than they would if poorly fed and every 100 pounds of that milk will contain just as much butter fat as is natural for given COW to give. If she gives 3 per cent milk and only 100 pounds a week, the milk will contain three pounds of absolute butter fat, or about three and a half pounds of butter. Feed her so she will give double the quantity of milk, and that milk will give double the quantity of butter fat, but will not be richer than the smaller quantity. The way tC get more butter fat Is to feed the COWS better Just what 1t Is best to feed them Is Il matter on which learned doc tors disagree at this moment Howev CT. it Is safe to feed them enough, ever if the ration is not quite balanced.
 I saw the other day amid the treas ures of a private collector a copy of the first edition of Cookers immortal work on arithmetic, published by T. yPassen- ger at the Three Bibles on London bridge. Only two, or at least three, perfect copies are known to the book collector One Is In the British mu- scum. This particular copy, its brown morocco pitifully faded, bears on its title page the inscription, Cookers Arithmetick. Perused and Published by John Hawkins by the Authors Correct Copy" It contains what purports to be portrait of ingenious Cocker ' Experts, however. shake their heads over the authenticity of this work of art. There are many engraved portraits of the epoch, but there was only ont Cocker. The British museum copy ha, no portrait, and there is too much req son to fear that this embeilishment wal added by some ingenious owner of al earlier century. Cocker died in 1875 This rare relic of the past bears dat' 167S.-Liyerpool Post.