able. Tongue-and-groove
sheeting should never be laid horizontally, but rather vertically, and a
smooth brick or concrete wall is better than wood in any case. The same
care must be taken to have the floor clean and dry. A floor of saturated
wood, containing millions of bacteria which are stirred up by the milker
moving around, causes many of those millions to be deposited in the
milk-pail. A concrete floor for the stalls and drains is the ideal
construction, and both should be thoroughly cleaned morning and night,
so that no dried refuse may remain as the living place for bacteria. Nor
should the manure thrown from the stalls be left in the vicinity of the
barn, but carried away at least 200 feet, in order that the barnyard may
be kept dry and clean, that no smell from the manure may reach the milk,
and that the flies which come from manure piles may be kept at least
that distance from the cows.

The next factor in the production of clean milk is the _condition of the
cow herself_, not in the matter of her actual health, but in the matter
of the cleanliness of her skin at the time the milking is done. If the
udder and sides of the cow have been coated with manure, it is certain
that more or less will fall into the milk-pail at the time of milking,
and the "cowy taste" of the milk is easily accounted for in this way. In
a modern stable, the milkman is careful to clean the cow ten or fifteen
minutes before the milking is done by sponging or washing her belly,
sides, and udder with a damp cloth or with a cloth moistened with a
disinfecting solution. In one set of experiments, for instance, 20,000
bacteria per c.c. were found in the milk when the cow was rubbed off
before the milking and 170,000 when the preliminary cleaning was
omitted. In another case, milk from four dirty cows gave an average of
90,000 bacteria, while other cows of the same herd, milked by the same
man, but carefully cleaned before milking, gave only 2000 per c.c. The
care involved brings its own reward, and it is in most cases a lack of
knowledge or an indifference to results which causes the malign effects
above noted.

Only a few weeks ago, the writer watched the hired man start the milking
and was disgusted to see the old-fashioned practice followed of
squeezing a little milk onto the man's filthy hands and then the handful
of milk rubbed around on the cow's teats to drip filthy and
bacteria-laden into the milk-pail along with the milk itself.

O