OOL, sweet milk makes most and best cheese. Milk is one of the most valuable products of the Ontario farms, but it is also one of the most perishable. It deteriorates very rapidly if neglected.
       The cows should be healthy and clean, and have plenty of good pasture. Colostrum — the first six or seven milkings — should not be sent to the factory. The stable should be clean, dry, and free from bad odors. The food should be clean, pure, sweet and wholesome. Cows giving milk should not be allowed to eat turnips or tops, mouldy meal, spoiled hay, or spoiled silage, cleanings from the horse stable, or anything which would tend to taint the milk.
       Either rock or common salt should be accessible to the cows at all times. Plenty of pure water should be within easy reach of milking cows; foul or stagnant water is injurious.
       Cows should be milked with clean, dry hands, after wiping the teats and udder with a damp cloth. Milk quietly, quickly, cleanly and thoroughly. The milk should be strained at once after milking, through a fine wire strainer, and also through two or three thicknesses of cheese cotton. The milk should not be strained in the stable or in impure surroundings. The milk should be removed from the stable or milking yard as soon as possible after milking, to a place protected from bad odors, dust, and direct rays of the sun. It should be cooled at once to a temperature of 65 degrees or under by setting the cans in tanks of cold water. After the milk is cooled to 65 degrees — and where Saturday night's milk and Sunday morning's milk is to be kept over until Monday morning, the cooling should be as low as 60 degrees in the hot weather. The cans may be covered with the lid and with a piece of damp, clean cotton.
       If the milk be placed on a milk stand for some time before taking to the factory, the stand should be covered and boarded in on the sides, and the whole neatly painted white. White is the coolest color. Milk should be protected from the rays of the sun, from the dust, and from the rain water, and should be kept cool with ice or cold water.
       The whey should be properly pasteurized at the factory. Sour whey destroys the tin and causes the can to rust. Rusty cans should not be used, as they cause bad flavors in the milk. If the whey be returned in the milk can, it should be emptied at once upon its arrival at the farm, and the can thoroughly washed and scalded and aired in the sunshine as soon as possible.
       Do not use wooden or galvanized pails. Discard or have retinned all rusty pails, cans or stirring utensils.
       Milk cans and pails should be washed with a brush and lukewarm water, in which a little sal soda or some other washing powder has been dissolved, then scalded and placed on their sides in the sun.
       Do not use a cloth to either wash or wipe utensils.
       The two main points in caring for milk are to have everything clean, and to cool (especially the night's milk) as rapidly as possible to a temperature of 65 degrees, and lower if possible.