Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1898 — Milch Goats. [ARTICLE]

Milch Goats.

The goat ought to do a great deal to relieve the scare which has been produced by the reports that we have been habitually drinking milk infected with the tubercle-bacilli d, as it Is said that very few cows are free from tubrecle. In Sicily, Naples, Leghorn, Hyeres, Avignon, goat men go about from door to door and sell milk freshly drawn from the goats—a flock of ten or twelve goats. At Leghorn and at Avignon I myself have bought fresh goat’s milk at the door. No doubt in many other continental towns a similar goat’s milk trade is carried on. The English, however, are slow in quitting their usual groove, however advantageous and wholesome the quitting may be. Many years ago I suggested to the British Goat Society the advisability of importing some milch goats from Malta. I have nowhere seen finer milch goats than those of Veletta, taken round the streets, and the goats milked at the door of each house. The finest are white, with small ears, and pink udders, reaching almost to the ground. Comparatively speaking, they give a larger quantity of milk than cows, and the goats are much more economically fed than cows. In Calcutta there is a pretty small goat —a sort of toy goat—which gives good milk. The inhabitants prefer goat’s milk with their tea to cow’s milk, and those who have tried it think so also. Then on the highlands of Naples and Rome they have a milch sheep, from the milk of which the famous “Rieotta” (cream curds) is made,—London Spectator.