Dairy Age from Beloit, Kansas • 1

ifMP I I Wk "Muscle, to Win, Must Be Lubricated With D. Coburn. i VOLUME 3. BELOIT, KANSAS, DECEMBER, 1902. NUMBER 9 St made up has cement floors and walls, i and in order to avoid dust is lighted by a skylight.

The air is brought in through water and kept in motion by a fan. The milk, modified according to the pnysicians' orders, is put up in glass tubes, each one containing the amount to be fed at one time. These tubes are placed in small willow cases like little champagne baskets, and contain as many tubes as are needed to feed the child for twenty-four hours. The little basket cases are sterilized each time they are used and each tube is carefully sealed. Little children fed on this scientifically produced, modified milk grew healthy and strong.

Physicians and their parents grew enthusiastic, and a fund was raised in a number of cities that has been made perpetual to furnish milk, modified according to the physicians' prescriptions for.Jfche ail- ing babies of the poor. i t. sr Appreciating the fact that milk produced unier scientifically correct conditions contains less than 10,000 germs to each cubic centimeter, while ordinary milk has about 100,000, doctors began to recommend it for other uses. Finding also that it could be kept-much longer than ordinary milk, the demand for whole milk from these farms for shipboard uses and ordinary general purposes has steadily increased. Although the corporation has been constantly adding to the number and size of its farms and enlarging the herds, the demand is and has always been in excess of the supply.

As has been said, the first object of this scientific farming is to produce the best possible milk. Still, the enterprise is conducted on business principles, and is a business success. The net yearly income is considered a fair return on the investment. In addition to the fourteen farms controlled by the company in this country, it has three in Canada and one near London, England. New York Sun.

Since organic matter, as dust, dirt, excreta, is charged with numerous numbers of bacteria, many of them gain access to milk while milking, falling into the pail from the atmosphere, from hair and dirt from the animal body, unclean hands and clothing of the milker, and by the use of non-sterile utensils. tant sounds and the song of birds break the quiet. The water supply is fine and abundant, and so carefully protected that contamination is impossible. Pasturing is no part of the scientific plan on which these farms are conducted. Fodder is raised, cut green and fed at regular intervals and in the proper quantities.

As high fertilization and intensive culture is the rule, two large crops are raised each year. That scientific methods are much better for the cow than unrestricted freedom is evidenced in this herd, where the sleek, shining coats, which indicate perfect condition, are the rule. In addition to receiving the best food and care, a physician examines the cows twice each month. No animal is retained that is not in perfect condition, or after it has reached a certain age. The manager of the farm is a graduate of Cornell University.

Connected with his office is a small laboratory equipped with apparatus for doing scientific work. It is here that the milk is tested and examined and other work in this line done, not only by the superintendent, but by students who come here for practical experience from various colleges. While each farm is under the direction of a manager, the entire supervision of all the farms, together with the laboratories, is under the personal care of the scientific director of the company. In addition to selecting the managers and holding them responsible for enforcing rules established in regard to the conduct of everything pertaining to those farms, he, from time to time, makes a personal investigation of what is being done. This farming on a large scale and strictly scientific lines did not spring into being full-fledged, but was gradually developed from the success of a small beginning.

After much careful experimenting a milk was produced so nearly germ free that it was a successful food for babies. Physicians had found that sterilized and pasteurized milk was not uniformly successful. Also that no form of milk could be used for all young children, but that it should be modified according to the needs of the individual child. To meet this need and deliver, free from pathogenic germs, the clean milk which had been produced, it was found that a city laboratory was necessary. Here the milk is received and physicians' prescriptions as to the relative amounts of fat, sugar and proteids are filled as druggists fill medical prescriptions, and milk is also sterilized or pasteurized if desired.

The room in which prescriptions are A present achievement of scientific farming is the production of milk so free from germs that, bottled as it is taken from the cow and sealed, it has been transported across the ocean and brought back again still in perfect condition. The farms where this milk is produced are not conducted on agricultural experiment station lines, the first object being to produce, milk practically free from bacteria, profit being a secondary consideration, although it is by no means ignored. The undertaking is unusual in uniting unuer the control of a single corporation eighteen farms situated near as many large cities, the aggregate area being 7,400 acres and the number of cows milked daily averages something more than 3,000. The conduct of these different farms is identical. Each has a resident manager in charge.

Most of these managers are college graduates and a number have been professors. It is required that all managers, whatever their previous training, shall spend some time in one of the laboratories of the company. There is a laboratory in each of the cities near which the farms of the corporation are situated, and it is from these that the milk is distributed. The farm near New York is typical of others controlled by the company. Here there are 225 cows, and each one of them is as carefully considered and cared for as fine horses in the best stables.

They are not of any particular strain, but are good grades, the standard being a young, perfectly healthy cow giving an average of ten quarts of milk a day which tests 4J per cent or more. The men, as they go about caring for and milking these cows, look, in their white, perfectly clean clothes, like serving men in a well-appointed dining-room. They rise at 4:30 o'clock, and after brushing each cow and washing the udder, put on their white suits which are washed each day and then sterilized, and proceed to the milking. The milk is at once put in covered sterilized cans and sent to be cooled and bottled. The room in which this is done has white tiled walls and a cement floor.

The double windows are so arranged that there is no dust, and the daily washing of the walls and floor keeps it scientifically clean. Here the air is fresh air being filtered and washed by a spray. The arrangement for cooling milk is so perfect that it requires only five miuutes to reduce it to a very low temperature. At 6:30 o'clock the milking is finished and the cows are fed, first with grain and then hay. No cow is fed while being milked.

All rations are carefully weighed av brought to the cows, no feed being kept in the barn. When they have finished feeding they are groomed, and if the weather is tine they are turned into the sunning yards, which ars cleaned daily. Here they lie an chew the cud of full-fed content or walk quietly about, and, if one may judge by appearances, are altogether as happy a company of cows as could be found in a summer's search. The barns are cleaned and swept twice and scrubbed once each day. Although simple, they are models in their way.

The wails, roof and rafters are whitewashed, so that every part, save the stall divisions and fine cement floors, is perfectly white. Each barn accommodates forty-eight cows, and as the barns are 38 feet wide and 104 feet long, this gives 1,000 cubic feet air space to each cow. A tier of windows forms the upper part of either side. The windows have solid adjustable shutters, so that either the heat or cold can be excluded. The stanchions are on a pivot, and the cow as she stands in her stall can turn her head to her side at will.

Her comfort is further insured by having a drinking cup filled to a certain height by means of a float and so placed that she can conveniently get at it any time. These stationary cups are cleansed daily and afterward sterilized with hot steam. Each stall is provided with a thick, soft bed of clean pine shavings, which fill the barns with a sweet, pine odor. As all refuse matter is removed twice a day and at once put on the land, there is no offensive odor about the farm, which at this season of the year, of a truth, lies smiling in the sun. The fields, of varying green, are perfectly drained, and along one boundary is a stretch of woodland.

Altogether it is a place to inspire the song of a poet and the confidence of a scientist. Being a little remote from lines of In milking, it is better for each man to have the same cows regularly. A cow that is used to being milked by the same person if a good milker will do better than where there are frequent changes. Suit the cows to the person milking, as one will get along with some cows much better than others. changed by an exhaust process, the travel, there is no dust, and only dis.