COMMON SALT IN ITS RELATION TO DAIRY USE.

BY DR. MARTIN CLARK, SUTTON.

[Read before the annual convention of the Nebraska Dairymen's Association, at Omaha, Dec. 14, 1887.]

GENTLEMEN-The chemical name of salt is sodium chloride, and is a direct union of an atom of sodium with an atom of chlorine. The sodium, however, is also known in chemistry as natrium, so that the symbol for chloride of sodium would be Na. Cl.

Chlorine is a greenish-yellow gas, and was discovered by Scheele in 1774. Sodium was discov ered by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1807.

If the metal or element sodium is burned in chlorine gas we have as a result common salt. Chloride of sodium is also formed, and in a state of perfect purity, by neutralizing acid hydrochloric with soda.

Sea water contains 2.7 per cent of chloride of sodium. It is obtained from that source in warm climates, as St. Ubes in Portugal, on the coast of the Mediterranean near Marseilles, and at other places where spontaneous evaporation proceeds rapidly; sea water being retained in shallow basins or canals, on the surface of which a saline crust forms with the progress of evap oration, which is broken up and raked out. Sea water is also evaporated artificially, by means of culm, or waste coal, as fuel, on some parts of the coast of Great Britain, and when the liquid approaches to some degree of concentration it is called bittern, it being bitter from the pres ence of chloride of magnesia. In instances where dairy salt has a bitter taste it is due to this impurity.

Other inexhaustible sources of common salt are the extensive beds of rock salt which occur in several geological formations posterior to the coal, as in England, Spain, and Poland. These beds appear to have been formed by the evaporation of inland seas, which gradually, in the lapse of time, made salt water lakes without an outlet, in which the saline matter continually supplied by rivers had accumulated till, the water being super-saturated, dropped the salt at the bottom, forming beds or rock salt. The Dead sea is such a lake, and the bottom of it is found to be covered with salt. The salt is sometimes sufficiently pure for its ordinary uses, as it is taken from these deposits, but more generally it is colored brown from an admixture of clay, and requires to be purified by solution and filtration.

Intead of quarrying out the salt rock and bringing it up through shafts to the surface, the overlying earth crust is pierced with a well, and fresh water allowed to make a solution of the salt, and then the water is pumped to the surface through a pipe suspended in the well, and then the brine is evaporated and salt obtained.

The salt found at the salt basin at Lincoln is derived from the dry bed of some old-time salt sea, and demonstrates that the ocean once covered Nebraska.

Chloride of sodium crystallizes from solution in water in cubes. Its crystals are anhydrous, i e.. without water, but decrepitate when heated, from the expansion of water confined between their plates. Pure salt, therefore, should be always dry and not cake in the sack, which, if it. does, we can be sure that it has absorbed it from the atmosphere.

I have made analyses of several samples, and when the salt had a tendency to be moist in wet weather and then cake in dry weather, I uniformly found chloride of potassium as an impurity The presence of a potash salt is accounted for in the fact that these salt sea marshes were bordered with sea weeds and other marine plants.

Mr. Carpenter, the intelligent superintendent of the Sutton creamery, informs me that for present use butter, the caked salt can be used, but where the butter is intended for summer use or for long keeping, the dry mealy salt is preferable.

In a man weighing 154 lbs. there are 47 grains of chlorine and 116 grains sodium, makin: 163 grains of chloride of sodium, being about one-fourth of an ounce, being quite a small amount of salt.

From this it would seem that the very least possible quantity of salt that can be used for the preservation of the butter the better.

Dyspeptics bear salt very poorly. It seems to me that a rich field is awaiting investigation for some one who could discover some antiseptic which, while it would preserve long keeping but ter, it should at the same time be harmless to a delicate stomach. Chloroform could be used, but the vessel or package would have to be absolutely tight. When opened for use the ch oroform could be driven off by the simple exposure to atmospheric air. Salicylate of soda has been used with excellent results.

CITY MILK SUPPLY.

B. R. STOUFFER, BELLEVUE.

Read before the annual convention of the Nebraska Dairymen's Association, at Omaha, Dec. 14, 1887.]

It would doubtless be interesting to know from just where the milk supply for a city of 100,000 persons comes-to know how many cows contribute to it, the number of persons employed, and the capital invested. In the absence of any available statistics, I can only give a few items as to source of supply. Aside from nearly 100 individuals and firms in and around the city, milk is shipped in on the railroad from various points up to 70 miles distant. The business here, as in older cities, appears to divide readily into two branches-that of producing being one, the selling another.

Some of the dairy men have decided that it is cheaper to buy milk than to produce it themselves, and in some particulars both are benefited, as the farmer gets more for his milk than he could for his butter with all the extra labor. And by selling cream in summer he has the sweet skimmed milk for his young stock. The price usually paid the farmer is 8 cts. per gal. in summer and 10 in winter, delivered at railroads in 10 gal. cans. The mode of handling before shipping differs according to the ideas of the buyer. Some have it thoroughly cooled with ice, some partially, others not cooled at all. Upon its arrival in the city it is put into deep setting cans holding about 4 gals., and set in a tank of ice water until sent out by the delivery wagon

to consumers.

Some milkmen, like most other persons who handle the food we consume, resort to various 'expedients to make the most out of it by watering and skimming, and in some instances using a manufactured preparation for increasing the quantity. Be this as it may, there is no doubt the quality is poor enough, and the business admits of undetectable fraud very readily, the seller's honesty being almost the only assurance of purity, and unless delivered in person even this is removed, as those in the business well know. The consumers are somewhat to blame for this adulteration, partly through ignorance of what good milk should be, but mostly because they want cheap milk, and it is made to order just as any other commodity on the market is. When we consider that milk costs about 123 cts. per gal, wholesale, delivered in Omaha, is then handled and sent to your kitchens at a cost of from 25 cts. to 30 cts. per can of two gals. the facts say there is something wrong. If the standard of milk allowed to be sold in the city should be raised as high as in many other cities, and be enforced, the price would be immediately advanced. Recently, in conversation with a consumer, I suggested that he pay more for milk, and water it to suit himself. He replied, "Milk is milk to me. I use it as I get it."

If the dairymen of Nebraska here assembled will inform the people of Omaha how to detect the adulterations in milk in a practicable manner, they will have conferred a great blessing, and at the same time have solved one of the knotty problems of the day.

Mr. Wing: There are certainly in Mr. Stouffer's paper a great many things for discussion. The question of adulteration that he touched upon, a good many of us ought to know something about. Then the question that he also touched upon of gathering and delivering good milk to town and in good condition. He mentions three different methods that retailers practice, the totally cooled, the not cooled at all, and the partially cooled. Total cooling and no cooling at all. There are several Omaha milkmen here, and they ought to know something of these three systems, and I for one desire to hear from them.

Mr. Paulsen: I have been in the business quite a long time, and have tried it either way. I find that my consumers are more satisfied when they get the milk warm, living close to the city, where they will receive it within an hour or two after milking. The hotels rather have the milk cold. It will keep better when thoroughly cooled. We have a double idea for retailing; we take the warm milk direct to the consumers, and for wholesale trade or hotels we sell cold milk.

Mr. Wing: Will the warm delivered milk keep as well as the cold delivered milk?

M. Paulsen: No, as a general thing most of the customers keep ice, and they generally ice it, and then it will keep fully as well. It used to be different. They didn't use to have hardly an ice house in Omaha, and then we had more trouble. Most of the milk to-day, even on retail routes, is cooled by placing the milk in ice water as soon as milked. To put the milk in freshlydrawn well water two or three times in twelve hours will make it as cool as necessary.

Mr. Bassett: I am not interested in the city milk especially, but I am interested in honest milk as well as honest butter, and all dairymen are. I have read and taken a great deal of interest in regard to the trouble in New York City and other states to get pure milk, and one of the plans adopted was this: They have inspectors who inspect the milk, and not only the milk, but inspect it in the commission houses which handle the milk largely, and also have men who travel through the city, and are privileged at any time to stop the milkmen and take a test of the milk from the wagon, and also go to the houses to see that the milk has not been adulterated along the route. They have adopted a standard of about 12 per cent of solids as the standard. If the milk does not come up to that standard they will reject it, no matter how pure, and I think that is a very good plan to adopt.

Mr. Paulsen: I find by measuring the milk that the milk produced here never comes up to the full standard at any time, unless it be in the fall of the year when the cows give but very little milk, mostly strippings. Here we have been feeding inferior food; it is almost entirely 'prairie grass. And furthermore I do not think that the breed of cows that have been used here comes up to the standard of the cows that have been used in the East where these milk guages have been made.

Mr. Whitmore: A friend of mine is milk inspector on a large route in Massachusetts, and in

conversation with him not long ago he told me that their law required 16 per cent of solids, and he says there are great quantities of pure milk from their dairies that won't come up to it. They think they will have to be under the necessity of amending that law.

Mr. Wing: I will call your attention to this analysis on this chart. Here we have an analysis of milk that was very rich. That was taken from the milk of a Jersey cow at the New York Agricultural Experiment Station. She gave very rich milk. That milk had fifteen and one-fourth per cent of solid.

Mr. Warrant: It appears that the law is defective in Omaha. It requires time to get law down to fine points, and we have not had time. In regard to that Massachusetts law, this last. summer I met a gentleman from Boston engaged in the milk business, and he said that the law there was so stringent that they did not pretend to sell pure milk. That they advertised their milk for skim milk. That the milk would not come up to the law, it would not meet the requirements of the law, and to avoid that they sold pure whole milk as skim milk.

Mr. Root: This pure milk depends upon two things: The machine-the cow-and what she is fed. That will make a high or low grade of milk. I know from experience if you take bran and brewer's spent malt that you will have a large per cent of water and a very low per cent. of anything else; whereas, if it is corn and oats, and timothy or clover hay cut at the right time, your milk will be rich in per cent of solids. These are the conditions, and if the daily men will take notice of it they will find that their profit lies in teeding good, rich feed and not musty hay. Sour ensilage makes bad milk. It will affect the entire composition of butter. If it is sour in the feed it will be in the cream. Pure, sound feed and good water, and if your milk don't come up to the standard of 87 per cent then you may lay it to your machine-your cow. Turn her off and get a better one.

I

Mr. Brewster: We had occasion last year to put up a little ensilage as a matter of experiment I have been in the dairy business for 28 or 30 years. I had heard so much of ensilage that I tried a little last year. I am supplying parties who sell milk in Omaha, and many of them say that they have had the best milk from my dairy of any that they have ever purchased. I feeding ensilage last year there was a marked increase in the flow of milk and no percepti le difference in the quality. I was so much pleased with it that I put up several times as much this year as last. I am free, so far as my experience goes, to recommend ensilage for milk don't care whether it is for city supply, making butter, or cheese, or whatever use you put it to. Last winter I conversed with some parties who were making butter. They contracted for from 30 to 35 cents a pound, and they fed scarcely nothing at all but ensilage, and in reply to my in quiry as to whether anyone objected to their butter manufactured from cows fed on ensilage, they said that there was no objection made to it, that their butter commanded the highest price throughout the season. They said they fed no hay at all. It was ensilage made from corn and clover with a very little meal added. There is a gentleman who had 150 cows, many of them valued very highly, and he was feeding ensilage for a test. They were full blood Hols ein, He was feeding them to see the amount of milk they could produce in a year. He said that it was the largest flow of milk from that feed of anything he had ever fed. He has a large herd in Syracuse, New York. I saw his berd, and was convinced that ensilage would pay.

Mr. Root: Did your ensilage sour?

Mr. Brewster: Yes, in a measure. Of course, in regard to that there is a large field for discussion. Mine last year was put up from what has been denominated town lots, because it was sown broadcast. This year I sowed it in drills, and presume that it will be much better. I regard that as being the future feed, and I think that the time will come that anyone who keeps any amount of stock will feed that as much as any other feed.

Mr. Whitmore: How do you build your silo?

A. Last year I adopted the old-style plan. I dug under the drive-way of my barn ten feet long and twenty feet deep, and filled it to the barn floor, and I was surprised at the amount of corn that it took to fill it. This year I find in bringing it up ten or fifteen feet is considerable labor, and I have added to my barn 28x25 feet and divided into two silos, with a ground gutter, so that the feed will go down hill instead of up in the feed-way between the cows.

Q. Is it built of lumber?

A. Yes, double lined and double floor.

Q. What pressure do you put in?

A. I put in no pressure; I put on some hay.

Q. Have you ever seen any ensilage that was not sour?

A. I have never seen very much. I have never seen any but what was some sour, but it was. put up in a more mature state than formerly. They told me that if it was put up as the corn began to glaze and harden it would not sour near so much.

Here Mr. Stouffer produced a small box of ensilage.

Mr. Coffin: I would like to ask how you filled your silo?

A. I had about six acres of corn very close to my barn, and my silo was partly underground.

I put my cutter on top, on the sill of the silo, and cut from there, and it dropped in until it was. full. We cut one day and hauled the next.

Q. You cut every other day?

A. Yes, sir. I estimated that I had between eighty and ninety tons.

Q. Did you weight it down?

A. No. I never fed anything that they were so fond of.

Q.

What is the size of your silo?

A. Twenty-seven feet long and fifteen feet wide and thirteen and a half high, and I did not have it full.

A. I think about six. My corn was light; it was planted in check-rows.

Q. About what was the condition of this corn when it was eat-had it glazed much?

A. No; I was quite a little time at it; it was soft roasting ears when I began, and some of it got to be ripe before I got through.

Q. Is this some of the ripest?

A. I would say it was the ripest, I noticed that the corn that was put in there rather soft,

the grains appeared to disappear entirely. We found the cobs, but no grains on them. That it was only the glazed ears that retained the form of the grain; the others seemed to have disappeared.

Q.

That is the common kind of corn?

A. Yes, that is the leading yellow corn, though I put in perhaps two acres of marble mammoth sweet corn. It was put in rather promiscuously, as suited our feeders. There are several things in regard to this matter that I would like to be better informed on. I have considerable waste in it, or at least considerable mouldy, especially around the edges and on top. My cattle appear to eat it very readily, even though it is mouldy. I have profited some by experience. I understand a little better the nature of it, and I think I can improve in the manner of putting it up. That is the reason that men who have experience in it advocate the division walls in the silo, so as not to expose it. I failed to understand that in reading the account before. I saw no use for these divisions.

Q. Did you tramp it down along as you were cutting?

A. Not purposely; my boys did some.

Q. Would not that have prevented the moulding around the sides?

A. I tramped purposely around the edge, but never in the center at all. The guide I went by was a book published in Wisconsin. I got one of their powers, and they sent me a pamphlet. I had no measure; I had my own calculations. The greatest failure was that I failed to cover. They had some recommendation from parties in England. They simply stacked it in the open ground, and it occurred to me if they stacked it and did not cover it at all, I failed to see why it had to be covered air-tight here. I made the sides as near air-tight as possible. I would suppose that the heat was somewhere between 80 and 90 degrees. My boys dug holes in the sides and stuck their feet in there to warm them.

Mr. Reed: Our friend tells me that he has not enough of this to last him through the winter. I would like to ask him to take careful note of the relative value between that and the feed which he proposes to use as soon as this material is all fed. I would like to ask him to keep a careful note and report to us another year. It seems to me that this is the kind of work we ought to do. My idea is, if the corn fodder is to be the dairy feed of the ordinary farmer we ought to find that out. I am not satisfied with it. One experiment will not settle the matter. gentlemen knows just about what this ensilage has cost him to prepare it. He will know about what his corn fodder has cost him after he has prepared it for feed, and if he will come here next winter and tell us what his experiment has cost, I think it will be of value to us all. Mr. Whitmore: I presume that Mr. Stouffer will act upon the suggestion?

This

Mr. Stouffer: In regard to the cost of this, my valuations are somewhat approximated, as all farmers are. I cannot just give the hour, the day, or the dollars and cents. The material and the hired work cost me about $50. The filling of it, estimating the fair valuation of my own time and team, cost me about $40. I think $95 would cover it.

Mr. Roher: I do not hardly know just in what manner to approach this subject. It started off in rather a peculiar manner and has diverged into so many channels that I hardly know where to make the break. In relation to the production of milk and the relative value of different foods, some advocate one, and some another. One has one system of proper feeding, and another another, and each general system has its enthusiastic admirers and advocates Where there are to-day 100 men putting up ensilage, there were a few years ago, I think, 500; at least so in the section where I was raised, where the putting up ensilage is an old story. I abandoned it, and I think you will all abandon it. There is no course of philosophical reasoning that can convince me that corn put up as corn is put up in the silo will make a comparatively safe food upon which to crowd a milk animal. I have had valuable cows lie down and die. My men employed by me could not detect the visible symptoms in those cases, but had I been present I would have recognized them. One morning the flow of milk would be entirely suspended, and the next morning she would be taken out of the stable a corpse. I have had valuable cows in that shape. That has made me afraid of the use of ensilage. I do not want to put a dampener upon any enthusiast of the silo, because I do not understand the modus operandi by which this process is carried on from the time the corn is cut until it is placed in the silo and taken out and fed, but I am just as well convinced in my own mind, from the condition of the fodder which I fed then, that proved conclusively to my mind that the primary cause at least was the food and the condition of that food. Now, we know that certain cond.tions of food will produce in the animal the pathological condition that is known to us as uræmia. When the animal becomes inflicted with that the milk flow will increase for a few days, possibly a week. It may be, however, if she has a very vigorous constitution, she will continue longer, but all at once collapse takes place. The ordinary farmer loses a cow; he does not take the pains to inform himself upon the condition of the milk-producing organs in health. The probabilities are he would not know the condition that existed in disease. I did not think that Professor Wing would get right up here and emphatically declare that in the condition that that is at this moment, he would call it a strictly natural food. Now, if it is not a natural food for an animal, it must in some nature partake of artificial food; hence, if it is artificial food, there must be some governing circumstances that will protect the animal to which it is fed. A man may take German millet and feed it and it will kill his horse or cow every time, unless the conditions are such that it will counterbalance the food. It is too much of an excitement upon the internal organs of the animal; the result is, that there is a natural weakening or lowering of vitality that renders that animal susceptible to any predisposed condition that may exist in the animal. The conditions of food are such that nothing but the very best of food, in the best possible condition, should be fed to the animal. The very best food for an animal is grass. The next best, and I think I can prove it by figures, that the most profitable feed to feed to a dairy cow, for butter or milk, is early-cut and well-cured grass. It may cost a little more to put up. I have no doubt that ensilage can be put up cheaper. I built my silo above the ground, but even when exposed to the air there would be little germs of mould develop upon that fodder. That shows that that food is in a condition not strictly natural and healthy. I believe that there is nothing that will undermine the health of the animal so quick as poor food.

Q. How did you build your silo?

A. It was a basement barn, and nothing around it, but the posts ran right up through it. It was intended for a bank barn, and we used to pile the manure under the barn, but that was all done away with, and had not been used for a number of years. We found it cheaper to have the old ox-cart and hitch on the cattle and put it on the field where we wanted it. We built the silo probably four feet under ground, and then carried it up ten feet above, built of twenty-two-inch rock wall, and then covered with two-inch boards cut out and fitted in between the sills nicely, and put tarred paper between that and the bank, and weighted it down until the liquid would ooze out and stand up level with the boards. That, to my idea, was almost hermetically sealed.

Q. You put it in green?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. How many seasons did you feed this?

A. Just one.

Q. Did it sour in your silos?

A. There is always a degree of fermentation about any ensilage that I have ever seen.

Q. Did you fill it in and then allow it to heat up?

A. No, I don't think there was an unnatural heat about it any more than the heat that would naturally arise.

Q. Did you fill it continuously?

A. Yes, I had five men in there tramping like the old-fashioned way of making sauerkraut, and we kept gathering as fast as we could; we run four ox teams, and we had this old Yankee mill, which cut a vast amount of fodder To continue where I left: The feed is not always so much in regard to the quantity. I want to make one assertion right here, and Ithink it is the secret of all successful dairying, and that is, regularity and uniformity of feeding. A good many farmers will feed a very large ration to-day, and less to-morrow, and then increase again. All these things affect a cow. A person has no idea unless he notes it carefully. I have a Jersey cow; she had been milked for seven months. I was called away from home about six weeks ago. My man neglected to bring her up in time, and he let her stay out all night. I came home late in the night, about two o'clock in the morning, and the next morning, the first thing (I do my own milking at home) I went to milk that cow, and she gave a tremendous amount of milk. The next night she did not give one-half of what she would have given had she been milked the night before, and it was days before I got that cow back to where she was before, and I don't think she ever got quite there, and that cow to-day, even being fed nothing but prairie hay and a quart of ground meal. realizes me eight pounds of butter a week. I do not think she could be any better. There is a point at which a man must stop. You cannot overtax the organs of an anímal and expect to get results for an indefinite length of time. A cow is like a watch, it will wear out. Last summer my neighbor and I, Mr. Williams, watched those cows. I would never, if possible, miss a milking, and be there constantly during feeding time. One time I was compelled to be gone to the East, and when I came back my cows had shrunk twenty-two pounds of butter in five days. Why was it? I can tell you why it was. I found out afterwards. Instead of those men getting up at five o'clock in the morning and having those cows milked by six, they got up at seven and commenced milking when they got ready, and drove up the cows at four o'clock in the afternoon and milked them. It requires regularity in milking and feeding. It is not always the quality or 'quantity of the different foods that produces good results. I have been reading Professor Henry's sermon upon cows. If that sermon was true, then I say there is no better food in the world for a cow than shorts and corn cut up. They may have all their theories. I tell you theoretical and practical ideas are two vastly dif ferent things. I feed altogether, and have had business dairying in this western country, and have made it my practice to teed shorts instead of corn, except in cold weather. Then I always ground the corn as often as I could possibly grind it in a big mill, and feed in proportion to the coldness of the weather. I give that as an extra ration to counteract the effects of the cold. Cold stables are bad. My barns are warm in the coldest weather, but every day my cows go out to the rack and eat, and in such conditions as that I feed them corn meal to counterbalance the extra strain upon them, superinduced by the cold. My experience has always been, and I think I have had as good results in making butter in this state as in the states of Iowa and New York. I have three consecutive years taken the premium for butter-making in the state of New York. In that state we used more buckwheat, but I think all experiments bear us out that ensilage taken as a substitute for other food will eventually prove a failure. Indeed, the silo in the hands of such men as Professor Wing, qualified to watch the process in the different stages through which it should pass and come out in good order, is probably all right, but there will be seasons when the corn will have to go in wet; when the temperature in that silo will raise so high that you can hardly put your hand into it, and how will you help it? I only wish that it would prove a success. I am persuaded that it is the cheapest way of handling corn for fodder, providing it is as good, but I would rather have twenty acres of fodder cut up for fodder in the right time. I have a corn that I raise myself called the Early Ninety-day White Dent. It is the most prolific in foliage of anything I ever saw, if planted thin enough. It throws out a very large ear. I have used that fodder for a long time, ever since I got the seed. I plant it early and cut it early. My corn is ready to cut up about the first of August and I cut it. In this western country through August we have a time so dry that we have to soil our cattle, and then I save my corn fodder and as soon as it is dry enough I put it in the barracks and there it stands and I never yet have had corn fodder spoilt after it was put up. Then I husk it and grind my corn, and cut up the fodder, and I think I have every particle of it.

Q. I thought the chairman said that corn cut at a certain time would mature in the shock. A. That is my experience; if it is cut just as it glazes nicely it will mature just as well. I think the greatest amount of feed that a man can possibly get is to take an acre of corn and cut it up and feed the fodder and grind his corn.

Q. Why is it that your cow gave so much more in the morning than at night?

A. Because she was not milked the night before. I said my man did not get the cow up and milk her.