The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-04


 charge of securing the local quota.
 Birmingham chapter No 74S2 has grown 20 per cent during the last few months, according to Minnie E. Green Oracle, and a full attendance is espe- cially requested at the meeting Tues day to hear plans for the membership campaign discussed
 Cora E. Chambers. district deputy and a. member of the Birminsham lodge is now working in Trussville. where chapter has only recently been organized. Mrs. Chambers led the entire state last year in securing new members
 sraphed them and then went with the manager inside to look at the separators in which the cream is taken out of the milk and at the great churns. each of which makes 400 pounds of butter in about 25 minutes. The cream is chemically soured. and churned the same day 1t IS received. The manager tells me he handles the milk of 330 farmers and that the amount received this morning was just 20.627 pounds. The milk is paid for according to the butter-fat it contains, and most of the farmers test their own milk and some even keep record of the per centage of butter-fat in the milk of each COW. After separating, the skim milk Is taken home to be fed to the hogs which later on are sold to the cooperative bacon societies for export to England.
 Leaving the churning rooms we went into another concrete floored steaming compartment in which cream, after sterilization, is put up Tn half pint and pint bottles for export By this time the women had come back to work, and we could see how the packing was done. Every thing was exquistely clean. The con crete floors and flooded and scrubbed every morning; the manager and the employees wear wooden soled shoes
 There are more than twelve hun dred cooperative dairy associations in Denmark, and the farmers belong ing to them number about two hun dred thousand. They produced last year more than 200.000,000 pounds Of butter and this was sold through the cooperative associations, so that it gave the farmer the highest price on the market. It brought in over two million dollars week, or more than one hundred million dollars year. The price of the butter was above 50 cents a pound About sixty million dollars worth went to Great Britain, which is the chief customer for Danish bacon and butter and eggs.
 Forty-Rod Butter.
 Nevertheless it is only a few de- cades since Danish butter had the nick name Forty Rod" This came from the fact that it was so bad that the smell could be detected a city block away from where it was kept The butter was not then known as Danish butter. It was sold to Ger man middle men of l<iel and Ham burg who exported it under the name of "kiel Butter" to England, where it brought about twelve cents a pound. Today there is no other land that exports butter so uniform ly good as Denmark, and none has cows that produce so much all the year round.
 The Danes pride themselves on the high average production of aE Of their cows rather than on that of any individual animal Everything is measured by butter-fat and the average yield of all these cows en- tered on the official records is now about 40 pounds per COW for every t2 months. The average percentage of butter fat exceeds four per cent.
 Nevertheless Denmark has some good record cows. I have before me the reports of two which competed for silver cup prize some years ago. Each of these gave more than forty thousand gallons in the first three years of her milk producing life. and ;nl<l of butter a day for every one of the pounds to spare.
 Cows that Wear Oycrcoats.
 The cattle ot Denmark wear over coats when it rains or the weather is cold. if they are out in the fields. I have described how they are kept in the stables day and night for seven months every year, and feed out of doors during the day for the five months of the summer. In their grazing they are not allowed to run wild. Each COW has her halter to which is fastened chain eight feet in length tied to stake in the ground so that she can feed only to the length of her chain After she has cropped her circle as clean as though cut by lawn-mower. she moos loudly and l am told that the farmer knows from this signal that it is time to change her location. At any rate, he then comes out with a maui like that with which one drives steel wedges in splitting logs. He pulls up the stake and leads the COW to a fresh feeding ground, where he pounds the pin down into the ground again. I took photographs today of l. way in an unfenced meadow. Each animal had a blanket of canvas GOV ering all of it's body but its head. neck and tail and legs below the knees. The cows mooed as we pho tographed them. thinking perhaps that we might be about to give them new circle of pasture.
 The chief breeds of cattle here are the Red Danish and a breed of black and white especially adapted to Jut- land. The first is the better. There are also few Jerseys and some milking Shorthorns. l saw some of the best Danish cows this afternoon during visit to the kolle- K ole farm within ten miles or so of Copen- hagen. There were perhaps one hun dred in the stable and each weighed. I judge. under 1900 pounds. l saw
  ish bulls. None of them was halt as heavy as the ten thousand dollar Shorthorn bulls on the Carpenter Ross farm near Mansfield, Ohio.
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 Peoples High Schools.
 Cooperation. such as is found here in Denmark. requires a high degree of education. The Danes are better schooled than any other people in