Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1874 — Prospects for Butter and Cheese-Winter Butter. [ARTICLE]

Prospects for Butter and CheeseWinter Butter.

There will undoubtedly be a scarcity of good butter throughout the West during the coming winter. In fact, there always has been, but from this on, until next spring, the price must rule high; for, while the exceptionally fine fall weather has kept the pastures flush and green, the previous drought had so dried the cows that the full measure of benefit could not be realized only in those exceptional cases where plenty of water and full feed had been provided during the, previous dry weather. The high price of butter has tended to draw- out considerable quantities of that which has heretofore been kept for winter sales, and there seems now to be but little doubt that, before the winter is half gone, those lots of butter that are of such excellent quality as to keep per-,, fectly will bring higher’figures than have ever before prevailed in the West. On (Dec. 1, 1872, the price of the best Western butter was twenty-seven cents, andthe best cheese fourteen and fifteen cents per pound. For a corresponding date in 1873 the best butter was worth thirty-five cents, and the best cheese thirteen and one-half cents. At this writing the best Western cheese is worth sixteen cents, and really first-class butter is so hard to get that it is quickly taken at forty cents, although it is generally quoted somewhat louver. The retail price of the best tub butter is fortyfive cents, and really superior fresh-made butter would bring fifty cents. At these prices for butter and cheese its manufacture is a better business than any other department of farm labor. Now cheese cannot be economically made in cold weather, but butter can be, if one only have new cows, plenty of feed and w-arm shelter. We should not be at all surprised before two months have passed to see good tub butter retail -at fifty cents. At—this price it does not take a good cow long to pay for herself. Butter in winter as well as in summer, to command the best price, must not only be firm in its texture, lightly salted and of good color, but it must also retain the natural aroma, which determines in a great measure its value. To secure this the very best hay must be fed, in connection with a liberal supply of corn meal and bran—if a few carrots can be fed daily it is better. The stables must be kept perfectly clean and neat; the milk-room in which the milk is s.et must be of as uniform a temperature as possible, varying from 55 deg. to 60 deg.; the cream must not be allowed to get bitter, but must be skimmed and churned as regularly as in summer, and lightly salted. Winter-made butter is not expected to how the high color of that made in summer, and herein many persons make a mistake in the use of annotto. As a rule, cows that are liberally fed with meal and bran and good well-cured hay will furnish milk of sufficient color. The addition of carrots each day will be found valuable, and, if the color is Hot sufficiently good, the orange-colored layer enveloping the middle of the root may be pulped in water, and, after straining, a sufficient.quantity of the colored water added to the cream before ingin making winter butter we should not advise washing the mass when taken from the churn. There are objections to this practice at any time, but especially in winter, since, as the butter is to be used immediately, and the weather being cold, there will be no danger of any disagreeable taint being acquired from the small quantity of nitrogenous matter contained in the product, and if not washed the whole aroma of the butter is retained.— Western Rural.