Few Words and More Butter.

The Wisconsin Dairymen's Association last year offered prizes for the best essays on butter-making, the essays not to exceed 250 words. Competition was active, and many valuable little treatises was the result. The first prize was won by D. W. Curtis, of Fort Atkinson, and reads as follows. We commend it to all butter-makers and to all writers of essays as a model of the boiled-down essence of brevity:

COWS.

Select cows rich in butter-making qualities.

FEED.

Pastures should be dry, free from slough-holes, well seeded with different kinds of tame grasses, so that good feed is assured. If timothy or clover, cut early and cure properly. Feed corn, stalks, pumpkins, ensilage and plenty of vegetables in winter.

GRAIN.

Corn and oats, corn and bran, oil meal in small quantities.

WATER.

Let cows drink only such water as you would yourself.

CARE OF COWS.

Gentleness and cleanliness.

MILKING.

Brush the udder to free it from impurities. Milk in a clean barn, well ventilated, quickly, cheerfully, with clean hands and pail. Seldom change milkers.

CARE OF MILK.

Strain while warm; submerge in water 48 degrees. Open setting 60 degrees.

SKIMMING.

Skim at twelve hours; at twenty-four hours.

CARE OF CREAM.

Care must be exercised to ripen cream by frequent stirrings, keeping at 60 degrees until slightly sour.

UTENSILS.

Better have one cow less than be without a thermometer. Churns without inside fixtures. Lever butter worker. Keep sweet and clean.

CHURNING.

Stir the cream thoroughly; temper to 60 degrees; warm or cool with water. Churn immediately when properly soured, slowly at first, with regular motion, in 40 to 60 minutes. When butter is formed in granules the size of wheat kernels, draw off the buttermilk; wash with cold water and brine until no trace of buttermilk is left.

WORKING AND SALTING.

Let the water drain out; weigh the butter; salt, one ounce to the pound; sift salt on the butter, and work with lever worker. Set away two to four hours; lightly re-work and pack.

A machine that can take hay, corn fodder, grass, and grain and manufacture them into good, rich milk at the rate of a quart per hour for every hour in the twenty-four, is a valuable one and should be well cared for. There are machines—cows—which have done this. There are many thousands of them that will come well up to this figure for several months in the year, and which will, besides, through another system of organisms, turn out a calf every year to perpetuate the race of machines. Man has it in his power to increase the capacity of the cow for milk and the milk for cream. He must furnish the motive power, the belts, and the oil in the form of proper food, shelter, and kindly treatment. By withholding these he throws the entire machinery out of gear and robs himself.