milk and dairy how to milk a cow, make butter,and learning

Now that you plenty of fresh milk, you will want to make butter! Here's how: Set the milk according to directions
given; then skim; stir the cream every day; and the day before churning, set the pot near the stove to allow the
cream to warm and get sour. To sour the cream, take the milk after it has stood 9 or 10 hours and place
it over a clear slow fire, but do not boil it.

In summer the process of scalding should be quicker than in winter,
as in very hot weather, if the milk should be kept too long over a slow fire, it would be apt to run or curdle.
Now turn all the cream into the churn. The coloring (if any is to be used) should be added now or
worked into the butter after churning, but by adding it during the process or before churning, the color will
be more evenly mixed with the butter. In churning care should be taken that the agitation is not too rapid
or so violent as to injure the grain of the butter. Churning should occupy from 1/2 to 3/4 of an hour; if the butter should be hard and granular, refusing to come together well, throw in a little warm water, churning all the while, and the butter wil
be gathered and ready to take up. Then work it until the buttermilk is worked out; this is an important feature.
Buttermilk contains the sugar, casein and salt of the milk, and when it is procured from sweet cream is both
delicious and nourishing, besides being easy of digestion. One ounce of fine purified dairy salt should
be used for each pound of butter. The quality of the salt should be strong marine, free from the brine of mineral salt.
The longer the butter is to be kept the greater the proportion of salt which should be used.
Summer butter is the best for salting.

An Easy Way for Kids to Make Butter!

2 Cups of Butter equal 1 pound
2 Cups of Lard equal 1 pound

Milk is a source of profit to the farmer when sold in its original state or made up into butter and cheese.
To have good milk requires good food for the cows, for unless they are so fed it would b folly to expect
any satisfactory returns.

Then again, care should be taken to keep them perfectly clean and comfortably housed. Animals suffer
the the inclemency of the weather, and a cow when distressed from any source shows it in the quality
of her milk. To make good butter requires good milk, therefore the cows should be well fed and properly cared for.

In milking observe the following rules: Do not use a cow milking machine. They do not give good service,
and in time injure the cow, besides causing them to run dry quicker. The hand method is best.
The milker should work both hands rapidly, keeping up a constant flow
until the udder is empty, when (except in severely cold weather) the milk will be crested with a fleecy foam.
Cleanliness is one great point to be kept in view. The best time to milk is either before or after feeding-never
while the cow is eating. Do not draw the milk
with a downward jerk; it irritates the cow and oftimes works injury to the bag. Fill the teat, and with
a firm pressure on the last three fingers empty it, drawing slightly on the teat and udder at the same time;
so proceed alternately with each hand until the supply of
milk is exhausted. The cow should be milked regularly and stripped quite clean.

The milk will be quite thin in quality before calving, and should not be used for some days after calving,
as at such times it is fit only for the use of the calf. Before setting, the milk should be strained into cans
and then set into cold water as fast as the cows are milked. Never mix the night's milk with the morning's.

To prevent souring from thunder storms, start a fire in the dairy; this should be done
even in the hottest weather.

Another good plan, which answers at all times, is to add to each quart 15 grains of bicarbonate of soda.
A thin iron chain passed
through the milk pans and the ends kept in cold water will prevent souring.