Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On town milk / by John Chalmers Morton. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![the floor ; and steam-jets rise from it. After thej arc scoured the churns are put upside down over these, and receive a very thorough final cleansing by a jet of steam playing thus for four or five minutes within them. They then stand on an open floor in an open shed to drain and coo], and are fit for use. Clean- liness and coolness are essential things. Having these, and pro- viding as rapid a transmission as possible, the consumer, will receive the milk, such as it may be, at its very best. The Milk Produce. What this milk is, however, depends upon the cow and the treatment of her, to which we have been referring. The milk of every cow has its own natural standard of quality, but taking the case of each apart, her milk is rich or poor, Jirst, according to her nearness to the time she calved ; and secondly, according to the quality of her food. The milk of a big ordinary cow, bought half fat for a London cow-house, will throw up 14 to 16 per cent, of cream in three hours in the lactometer during the first few weeks after calving ; and the same cow similarly fed will not yield much more than half so good a quality, when after six or eight months milking she is rapidly diminishing her quantity. At an equal age however at the pail, the London cow, fed so as if possible to maintain or increase her flesh, will yield a richer milk than a country-fed cow which is being milked at grass. The way to keep a uniform quality when, as in London, a great part of of the food (grains and hay) is constant throughout the year, is to keep buying in fresh cows in pretty constant numbers, througliout the year. But except in the poorer districts, where the demand for milk does not vary throughout the year, this is not commonly done. A London cowshed in the west-end for example, is full only during the spring and summer months when London is full. And as it is then that a richer milk is wanted for the sake of the cream which is required at good houses during the season, that is the proper time to buy in freshly calved cows. And, as the quotation given at the outset of this essay proves, dealers do not scruple to take a ])ortion of the cream It throws up, and even to add water before selling the thus manufactured article as new milk. As regards the average quantity of milk yielded by a cow under the circumstances of a London cowhouse, I have been told that this very dishonesty is sometimes a difficulty in the way of obtaining trustworthy information. The small cowman who, by adding water, sells more than his cows produce, will, it is said, report a yiehl larger than the truth to cover his roguery. At many small cowhouses which I visited two years ago I was](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22298435_0025.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
