CHAPTER IX.
MILK PRODUCTS
Every milk producer should make some study of the principal products that are made from milk, for such information may help to market it to a better advantage.
Butter. The law requires that butter contain 80% butter-fat and that it shall contain less than 16% moisture. In 100 pounds of creamery butter there is usually about 3 pounds of salt, 1 pound of casein and between 15 and 16 pounds of water.
Figuring that butter contains 80% fat for the minimum which allows for the maximum amount of water, the following amount may be obtained from 100 pounds of milk:
100 lbs. of 3% milk will produce 3³⁄₄ lbs. of butter.
100 lbs. of 4% milk will produce 5 lbs. of butter.
100 lbs. of 5% milk will produce 6¹⁄₄ lbs. of butter.
Cheese. It usually takes about 10 pounds of 4% milk to make 1 pound of cheddar cheese, which is the common cheese usually sold at the stores. This cheese will test out about 36.8% fat, 25.5% protein, 6% sugar, ash, etc., and 31.7% water.
Cottage Cheese. Cottage cheese is usually made from skim milk. 100 pounds of average skim milk will make from 12 to 15 pounds of cottage cheese, such as is usually sold on the city market. Where it is creamed the cream is put in after the cheese is made.
Cream. 100 pounds of 4% milk will produce: 20 pounds of 20% cream and 80 pounds of skim remaining, 13¹⁄₃ pounds of 30% cream and 86²⁄₃ lbs. of skim remaining, or 10 pounds of 40% cream and 90 pounds of skim remaining.
The average cream sold tests about 30% butter-fat, so on the average the farmer has left about 86 pounds or a ten-gallon can of skim milk for every 100 pounds of 4% milk.
Skim Milk. The value of skim milk on the farm as feed is an important one for the farmer. The price of whole milk in the city is not always high enough so that it pays the farmer to sell his skim rather than to use it for feeding. During the flush season in the spring when milk dealers are all burdened with a surplus of milk, it would be a great advantage if more farmers would separate and feed the skim milk to hogs. I will endeavor to give here as accurately as possible what real information I can gather from Experiment Station reports concerning the feeding value of skim milk. At the outset it might be well to state that on this question I have never known any two agricultural experts to agree and experiments need to be carefully analyzed before they yield true information.
I can prove to you from experiments published in Henry & Morrison’s “Feeds and Feeding” that skim milk is worth only $.08 a hundred pounds when corn meal is worth $1.00 a hundred, and I can prove that skim milk is worth $.31 a hundred pounds when corn meal is worth $1.00 a hundred. In fact when an experimenter undertakes to prove a thing he has very easy sailing if he can line up conditions to suit the proposition he intends to prove. The trouble with most experiments on this subject has been that they are apparently planned to be used as arguments for the purpose of increasing the feeding of skim milk and they do not undertake to solve the real question involved.
Every one knows that corn alone is too unbalanced a ration to feed to hogs profitably. Where it is endeavored to show that skim milk has a very high value, one bunch of hogs is fed corn alone, and to compare with it another bunch is fed corn and a small amount of skim milk. Let those who are satisfied with the information that can be obtained by such an experiment use it and I will have no dispute with them. But for most of us the question is whether we should feed alfalfa to the cow and the cow’s milk to the pig or let the pig eat his own alfalfa. A hog’s ration may be balanced with alfalfa hay or with alfalfa or rape pasture. The question is whether milk and corn makes as cheap a gain as alfalfa and corn. It is very difficult to find experiments that answer this question and it is the most practical one in the world. If it is good sense to use the cost of producing pork on dry corn alone as the basis of getting at the value of milk, it is also good sense to use skim milk alone as the basis of figuring the value of grain. In an experiment published by Henry & Morrison on page 597, where little pigs weighing only twenty-five pounds were used and which are capable of making cheaper gains on milk than older hogs because they have smaller bodies to maintain, it took 2,739 pounds of skim milk to make one hundred pounds of gain. But where 233 pounds of grain were fed with 935 pounds of skim milk there was also a gain of one hundred pounds. Figuring now as they do who would set the value of milk by the cost of feeding dry grain, we will use skim milk as a basis of figuring. If skim milk is worth $.30 a hundred, corn is worth $2.32 a hundred. This is the same line of reasoning as is used when in an experiment reported on page 598, if corn is worth $.01 a pound we find that skim milk is worth $.30 a hundred. All they prove is that a hog must have something besides corn or milk. Corn is the cheapest hog feed but it is too unbalanced a diet to get the best results when fed alone. A small amount of skim milk or something else will balance the diet. According to reports published by Henry & Morrison on page 598 it will be noticed that 585 pounds of skim milk reduced the amount of grain required to produce 100 lb. growth by 179 pounds. If corn is worth $.01 a pound and we figure on that basis, skim milk is worth $.31 a hundred pounds. But notice what happens when the amount of skim milk is increased beyond what is needed to supply the elements which corn lacks. When the amount of skim milk is increased by 463 pounds more, the amount of corn meal eaten was only reduced by 56 pounds, so that for the first 585 pounds the farmer was getting $.31 but for the next 463 pounds he was getting only $.12 a hundred pounds, and when the skim milk was again increased by 849 pounds the amount of corn meal required was only reduced 71 pounds and this figures down the last batch of skim to only about $.08 per hundred pounds. These experiments prove that we must keep somewhere near a balanced ration but do not prove anything regarding a definite value of skim as a feed.
What your skim milk is worth on the farm depends altogether on how much it is needed to balance the diet in hog feeding operations. It is of much more value for little pigs than for larger hogs that are more capable of digesting grasses. Professor Henry says, “Pigs fed skim milk and grain gained nothing from pasture. Grazing stimulates the appetites of pigs getting grain but no milk and they eat more grain and make larger and more economical gains.” So we see that pigs will pass up pasture for milk and that when milk is fed to pigs on pasture it replaces the use of pasture so that it does not do much good to pasture hogs that are fed milk. Experiments reported on page 614 show that pigs on alfalfa pasture require 344 pounds of grain to gain one hundred pounds and that on rape pasture only 340 pounds are required.
Different experiments always vary slightly as to the amount of grain required to make a certain growth. But taking the most advantageous ration that we can prepare with milk and corn as shown by these experiments, we may conclude that something like 300 pounds of grain and 500 pounds of milk will make one hundred pounds of growth on one hundred pound hogs, and that about 350 pounds of grain fed to hogs on pasture will make the same amount of growth. Let each farmer figure out what pasture and grain cost him and he can get approximately the real value of skim milk. For large hogs milk will be worth less than here shown. For smaller hogs it will be worth more.
It may be interesting to know the cost per pound of skim milk solids figured at different prices, but the chemical analysis we are not considering. One hundred pounds of milk usually contains about 9.25 pounds of solids. If 100 pounds of skim milk is worth $.20, one pound of dry matter would be worth $.0216 and a ton would be worth $43.20. At $.40 a hundred, one pound of dry matter would be worth $.0432 and a ton would be worth $86.40. At $.50 a hundred, one pound of dry matter would cost $.0540 and one ton cost $108.00.
Whey. The average composition of whey is about as follows: water 93.12%, and total solids 6.88%. Of the total solids there are about .27% fat, .81% nitrogenous substances and 5.80% sugar, ash, etc. For pigs whey has a feeding value about half that of skim milk.