the backyard dairy book

7/28/2019 The Backyard Dairy Book

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This httle book is propaganda.Its declared aim is to persuade

you to get yourself independent ofthe system in dairy products.

It gives you all the basic infob*mation you needto start your own backy-ud dairy. . . .

wherever you are.There are detailed sections on the home production of

butter, soft and hard cheeses, yogurt, khoa andmany other dairy products.

Revised and updated with additional material.


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About this bookAbout the authorsAcknowledgements1. Why we want to persuade you lo start dairyproduction2. The basic economics of home dairy production3. What animal to start with4. Making a start: what youll need5. Feeding the goat6. How to milk7. Stage two: progressing to a cow8. Dairy products9. A little technical information10. Cream production at home11. Butter making at home12. Cheese production at home13. Yogurt production at home

14. Yet more dairy products to make at homeReferencesMore helpful books

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333941464855596576808485


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At the very least, home dairy a,lroductie;ri will involve you inan outlay of f.25 and half an hour of work per day, every day.It will more probably involve you in quite a lot more. Sa,why should you bother 3 We will give you some good reasons.CASH SAVING

The less CASH you need to buy the necessities of life, theless you need to earn by selling your time as an employee,or by selling the products of your work as a self-employedperson. IF YOU ARE PAYING TAX AT THE STANDARDRATE, EVERY POUNDSWORTH OF FO0D WHICH YOUPRODUCE YOURSELF SAVES YOU HAVING TO EARNf 1.43~. Remember that. . I . Furthermore, if you can keepyour cash needs below f 12 per week, then you shotild beable to get away without having to pay National Insurancestamps, so saving yourself as much as f 2.41 per week.So, if you are interested in reducing your income needs,where do you start? Food and drink are obviously the itemson which most families spend the bulk of their income. Infact, according to the latest Family Expenditure Survey in1973, the average UK household spent 29% of its total ex-e--La.3+J


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penditure on food and drink - f 11.58 at 1973 prices. Thiswas split down as follows:f

Milk 0.71Cheese 0.20Butter 0.18Other Dairy Products orDairy Substitutes fice-cream, tinned milk, cook-ing fats) 0.32Reef and Veal 0.57

TOTAL FOOD EXPENDITURE WHICH COULD BE HOME-PRODUCED XP;A CKYARD DAIRY : El. 98her items in the focd budget, for comparison, were:

fVegetables 0.84Fruit 0,48~BP 0.29Poultry 0.91Meat (other than beef, vealand poultry) 0,96

So, growing your own vegetables will save you money, andchickens will save ysu money, but if your consump-ems are close to Mr. and Mrs. Average Family, airy could save you most of all. If you spend lessaverage (as we might suspect) on items such as MealsBought Out (fl.41), Sugar, Sweets and Jams (fO.46), andAlcoholic Drink (21 a85), then you probably spend morethank average on the products you could produce in a backyarddairy. At today% prices, a backyard dairy could save youaround f 3-4 in bought-in food - in other words, it could the-oretically reduce your before-tax income needs by f4-6 perweek.


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ENJOYMENT AND SATISFACTIONFor many people, this is the prime motivation in attemptinghome food production. There is certainly a great deal ofpleasure and satisfaction to be had from keeping a house-cow or house-goat. When properly reared, either type ofanimal becomes an affectionate family pet - a member ofthe family. Then there is the enormous satisfaction ofcheese and butter making. Both demand a high degree ofpersonal judgement and care, but in both cases the homeproducer can expect to produce products greatly superiorto those from the factory. Cheese making in particular,offers so many variations in technique, and many differentflavours and consistencies that it can become an absorbinghobby in itself. Like wine making, it has the particularfascination of controlling and utilising a natural live prINDEPENDENCE FROM THE SYSTEMThis may also motivate you to start home dairy production.We can all sit on our backsides and moan about the eco-logical effects of modern farming methods, about the powerof modern industrial corporations and about peoL-le havingto spend their lives as factory automatons. Unless you .dowhat you can to cut down your economic reliance on thissituation, you are as much to blame for what you aremoaning about as anyone. Now that you have picked upthis book, there is no excuse. We are going to tell you howyou can reduce this reliance considerably. Combined witha switch to vegetarian eating, and the cultivation of a smallvegetable and fruit garden or allotment, home dairy prod-uction could make you SO-90% independent of the system infoods. (Look out for Andrew Singers book on backyardegg production coming early in 1976).The milk you are buying right now is probably around threedays old; and it has been pasteurised (heated to destroybacteria). It may also have been left out in the sun and thushad some of its vitamins destroyed. It is probably produced


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by cows in large commercial herds, pushed by carefulfeeding of pre-mixed factory foods to their limits of milkproduction. Treated this way, cows are far more likely tosuffer from mastitis and other udder troubles. They haveto be injected in the udder with penicillin or other anti-biotics. In a recent study of 40,000 samples of milk, 11%contained penicillin and 1% other antibiotics. This createsa danger of immunity to these drugs in humans and also ofpossible direct harmful effects on the body. One antibioticused to treat mastitis, chloramphenical, can fatally dis-organise the marrow of the bone. Surely, fresh milk fromyour own animal must be better for you than what you aregetting now.In addition, there may still be danger from the chlorinatedhydrocarbon group of pesticides (DDT, Aldrin, Dieldrinetc. ) which build up to high concentrations in the fat ofanimals grazing on treated land and can result in severecontamination of the fat in milk (See Reference 2).Dairy farming, like all branches of farming, has beenconcentrated into large units by agribusiness, The US nowboasts huge cowtels which have brought their own pollutionproblems. One of these super-farms can produce as muchshit as a fair-sized town. And as you can guess, it is noteconomic* to actually use this magnificent natural fertilizerso they have been known to channel it for direct untreateddumping into nearby rivers, thus throwing out the ecolog-ical balance of large river systems.Under the UK Public Health (Food Preservatives) Regul-ations, 1925-1940, the addition of preservatives is officiallyprohibited in all dairy products. However, there have beeninvestigations in the USA and elsewhere of hydrogen per-oxide being used to improve the qua1 ity of milk for cheesemaking. Thats the stuff that you can use to dye your hairblond - we wonder what it does to your stomach.. . . (SeeReference 3).


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Apart from the pure health aspects, you may be spurredon faster to home dairy production by a little lmowledge ofthe kind of places that now do the work previously done bypretty milkmaids in cool dairies. Butter is now widely madeby a continous process in large factories, which extrudes itout to be-cut and uackaged. Some cheese production, notablySwiss and Ched&r, has progressed to the continue-Jsprod-uction line stage and you can be sure that they are workingon those that cant yet. But none go quite as far as processedcheese, defined as:* T3e clean, sound, pasteurisecj! prcduct made bycominuting and blendin:, with the aid of heat andwater, with or without the addition of salt, one ormore lots of cheese into a HOMOOENEOUSPLASTICMASS. (Also Reference 3 - our capitals).

Process cheese (made in slices by organisations such asKraft) is treated with lo-20%* of a special starter which in-hibits certain bacteria naturally present ir. milk but whichcause gas-blowing and redlxt the keeping qualities ofneatly-packaged family sized cheese portions. The anti-biotic used, nisin, is said not to have any harmful effectson the flora of the human stomach. Kraft slices are madeby rolling presses and the extruded sheet formed is thensliced into strips, which are fed to the cutting and packingmachines.You may also be interested to know that experiments areunder way on irradiating cheese with powerful X-, gamma-and other rays to prevent mould growth under plastic wrap-pers. So, before the dairy technologists get too carriedaway on their search for the perfectly uniform, infiniteshelf-life dairy product, perhaps the time has come to pointa rude gesture in their direction and become independent ofthe whole unpleasant scene.


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CHURNING BY DOG-POWER.


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2 the basic economihome dairy pro

If you want to learn more about becoming more independentin dairy products, the first shock we want to get you over isthat there is no half-way house, With cereal products, forinstance, you can save an enormous proportion of breadcosts by buying wheat in bulk and grinding and baking athome - without having to get involved in the actual growingof the gram. The same is not true of dairy products. Youneed around ten pints of milk to make one pound of butter.So you can see very quickly that buying retail milk for buttermaking is totally uneconomic, certamiy at the present sub-sidised prices we pay for butter in the UK.The picture is not so clear-cut with cheese. You need abouteight pints of milk to make one pound of hard cheese, sothatat present UK prices, it could just be worthwhile makingyour won cheese from bought retail milk. Some of you mayfeel like attempting to find a source of milk sold cheap be-cause it is slightly off and so get into cheese making thatway, but the point we want to make is that, generally, homedairy production only really becomes worthwhile when youhave your own milking animal.Now the idea of keeping a cow or a goat in a London back 1


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The interior of Holland Park Dairyand

The floor plan of the same Dairy

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garden, or wherever you are right now, may seem crazy toyou, but it is not that crazy. A goat kept in Bermondsey (inLondons dockland) during the Blitz actually won a world milk producttxi prize. In times gone by, even quite smallEnglish households kept a cow, and in some districts thelabourers cow was part of his wages. Cows were widelykept in London until a few years ago. The last London herdwas at Peckham Rye - until 1959. Rumour has it that thereis still a dairyman operating in Liverpool, keeping his cowsbehind the shop. If any reader knows more about him pleaselet us know.

So, if you live in anything at least as rural as a groundfloor London flat, keep reading. We have information herewhich could get you the independence and savings which wementioned earlier.


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All mammals produce milk, but only certain ones are reallysuitable as regular milking animals - namely the largerdomesticated breeds, the cow, the horse, the goat and thesheep. Unless you want to go deeply into self-sufficiency anddouble up your milking mare as a low cost form of transportwe suggest you forget the horse. Milking breeds of sheepeldst in France, where sheeps milk is used to make suchprize cheeses as Roquefort; but if you are not desperate forthe taste of backyard Roquefort, we suggest you forget sheepas well. This leaves us with cows and goats as the mostsuitable animals for house milkers. Both are widely kept forthis purpose and there are many owners with a strong pre-ference for one or the other. This can be confusing for thewould-be backyard dairyman seeking advice, so we will tryfirst to give a reasonably unbiased assessment of the mainpoints in favour of each.IN FAVOUR OF GOATS* Goats are delightful animals to keep, they are full of indiv-iduality and character.* They will eat almost anything. They can survive on land


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where most cows would starve,* A g-at is a more efficient converter of foodstuffs into milkFor every ten stone bag of dairy cake fed, the averagegoat produces two gallons more milk.(See Reference 4)* The milk production of a goat is about right for the dairy

product needs of the average family. It needs less spacethan a cow; costs less to buy;requires less equipment andless time to look after.* Goats milk is said to be easier to digest. People sufferingfrom eczema, asthma and psoriasis are often helped bychanging from cow to goat milk. (See Reference 5)* With a small trailer, your house goat can be taken alongon family trips. A cow requires someone at home everyday to milk it.* Goats* milk can be frozen.* You can sell goats milk without a licence. In order to sellcows milk, you have to invest a lot of money in officially-recognised dairy equipment and facilities.


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.-

IN FAVOUR OF COWS

* You are used to the taste of cows milk. Goats milk tastes pretty similar cold, we find, but gives off a goatyl smellwhen heated. (This is due to the presence of short-chainfatty acids in the milk. These, in ewes milk, are resp-onsible for the peppery taste of Roquefort compared withStilton. See Reference 6. )* Most breeds of cow will not destroy young trees andbushesas will goats.* Surplus bull calves can be sold or raised to produce vealand beef. Goats meat is not as valuable.* A well-reared house cow is gentle, affectionate and docile.In comparison, most goats are boisterous and capricious.* If properly trained, a cow can double her usefulness bypulling the plough for you as well.

* Cows milk cream settles easily and can be obtained with-out the use of a mechanical separator. The butter is just


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as you would expect it to be. Goats milk butter can begreasy.* A cow grazes happily with little trouble to its owner andcan be left out day and night, summer and winter. A goathas to have shelter at night and even during the day in caseit rains.* Artificial insemination is universally available for cows,but not for goats. Goats have to be transported to the billyfor mating.* The labour costs per pint of milk are much lower. This,of course, is the reason why virtually all commercial milkproduction is from cows.

Frankly, our advice is that the animal with which you startwill depend upon the circumstances:1.

2.

3.

If you or one of your family suffer from excema, asthmaor psoriasis, try a diet excluding all cow-based products(meat and dairy). If it helps, then buy a goat.If you have less than about an acre of decent grazing, youare going to have to bring large quantities of food, eithergathered or bought, to a cow. The economics of homemilk production then become marginal, so go for a goat.It eats less and is less fussy than a cow.If your land is of poor quality, it will probably supportonly a goat tir a Dexter cow.

In all other circumstances, we recommend a cow rather thana goat as the most suitable house-milker. This is mainlybecause it is so much less demanding and troublesome, andalso gives you 100% acceptable milk and easy cream. A cowis very satissfying and relaxing to keep, but it must be admit-ted that it is a fairly daunting animal for a complete beginnerto manage. Whatever your circumstances, there is a lot tobe said for starting off with a goat, even if you intend to pro-gress later to a cow. You can learn how to milk more easily


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on a goat and you will make less expensive mistakes. Goatsalso have one unfair advantage over cows for any beginner,There are many more amateur goatkeepers around thancowkeepers. They are enthusiastic, they run lots of localclubs where you can learn a great deal and they are gener-ally very helpful to beginners, So start with a goat and then,unless your circumstances are as 1, 2, or 3 above, moveonlater to a cow.


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We are going to assume that you will follow the advice of thelast cdpter and start off with a goat, possibly progressingafter a couple of years experience to a cow. If you want togo straight to a cow, read all this selectively and try, if youcan, either to start with a calf or get lots of local help -from sympathetic farmers, vets or the like.

WHAT GOAT TO BUY?

Apart from choosing between the various different breeds,the first choice is whether to go for a non-pedigree *scrubgoat through the small-ad columns of your local newspaper,or to invest in a pedigree from a reputable breeder. A%xub* kid or goat may cost as little as five pounds and theadvantage is that if you make awful beginners mistakes andshe dies or goes out of milk, then you have not lost much.The disadvantage is that you get attached to an animal thatwill more than likely turn out to give an irdifferent yield andyou will end up doing as much work for two pints a day asyou would to get eight pints from an animal in whioh you had


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invested and risked a bit more money. We suggest that youlay out twenty pounds for a four to six month old female kid,handreared by a breeder recommended by other goatkeepers.That is the cheapest start, but of course, you have to waitanother eighteen months or so before you get any milk. Ayear old pedigree goatling would cost thirty to thirty-fivepounds and save you six months of waiting. (Note that theGolden Guernseys are about ta;vo-thirds of these prices. )There is a great advantage in getting a kid that has beenhandfed from birth. It will respond positively to humans andbe much easier to handle.As to breeds of goats, there are a number to choose from:THE SAANEN is a Swiss breed, pure white and capable ofthe highest yields on decent grazing.BRITISH SAANEN is a mixture of the Saanen with nativeBritish stock and is recommended for its docility.TOGGENBURG is another Swiss breed, brown with whitemarkings. It is smaller than the first two and less high-yielding but it is the best breed for grazing rather thanbrowsing.BRITISH TOGGENBURG is bigger than the Swiss breed andhas a higher milk yield.BRITISH ALPINE is large, black with white markings anddifficult to control.ANGLO-NUBIAN is heavier than the Swiss breeds and it hasfloppy ears and a Roman nose. It comes in various coloursand gives the creamiest milk, but not in great quantity. Thebreed is very noisy and nervous.GOLDEN GUERNSEY is not recognised by the British GoatSociety. It is a sort of mini-goat and very suitable for back-yarding. It stands about 25 inches to the shoulder and givesfour to five pints a day, eating correspondingly less. It isvery afiectionate and becomes attached to its owner so onlybuy when it is very young. It is cheaper to buy than the otherbreeds but it requires special care in cold winters.BRITISH is the name given by the British Goat Society to


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pedigree cross-breeds. Some champion milkers are in thiscategory.Any of these breeds are suitable for the beginner, as longas you recognise their problems, for instance, thenervous-ness of the Anglo-Nubian or the difficulty of controlling theBritish Alpine. In certain. circumstances, the fact that goatsprefer browsing on a variety of plants, shrubs and trees maybe a disadvantage. The little Toggenburg is the best breed toadapt to a life of grazing on grass and little else.

Having said all that about breeds, the a.ctual breed you willchoose almost certainly will turn out to be less important afactor determining success or failure than the milk yieldingqualities of the particular stock from which your goat wasbred. Yields vary enormously, from under two pints a dayto two gallons a day and more. There are a number of dedic-ated breeders around the country doing their best to improvethe quality of British goat stock. Our advice is that, unless


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CCCG ,DCINT IN A MILXER AND BREEDING GOATl-2-3-4-5-6-7-a-9-10 -11 -12 -13 -14 -15 -16 -17 -18 -19 -20 -

Eye, bright and gentleHead, shapely and intelligentNeck, long, not coarseShoulders, clean and neatBack, the line long and levelRibs, deep and well sprungPelvis, wideRump, sloping gentlyEscutcheon, wide and reaching highRear of udder, well developedHocks, wide apart and straightFeet, sound and neatTeats, pointed and directed forwardUdder, spherical and firmly attachedBarrel, ample for foodMilk veins, prominentBody, deep allowing room for heartPasterns, fairly straightForelegs, straight, sound not too closeThroat, clean and fine


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you are prepared tc treat it as a short-term learning exer-cise only, pay more and get an animal whose pedigree pro-mises a good milk yield.In order to locate such an animal, the first step is to writeto the British Goat Society at Rougham, Bury St. Edmunds,Suffolk, enclosing a stamped and addressed elivelope andasking for ihe secretary% address for your local goat club.Also, if you have already decided on the breed you want, askfor a list of recommended breeders. Go to a couple of goatclub meetings and ask around about breeders and, if youwish, whether any members have good goats in milk or inkid for sale. If you are particularly interested in the GoldenGuernsey breed, contact the English Golden Guernsey GoatClub, Henstead Lodge, Harleston, Norfolk.Judging the likely milking quality of a kid is no matter for abeginner. That is why we emphasise getting local advicethrough your goat club. The best indicator, if you lm~-~ 2~. Yto jAdge it, is the kids pedigree3 but clearly you want abright, healthy looking kid with an alert eye. The best goatsfor milking tend to be non-stop nervous eaters l Lastly, un-less you want your goat for chasing scrumping boys out ofyour orchard, make sure that the kid is hornless or hasbeen dehorned.

HOUSING AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEMSDepending upon your land and your preferences, there arevarious systems of management suitable for a house goat.1. EXTENSIVEIf you are surrounded by open scrubland or moorland wherea roaming goat can do little damage, you can let it do justthat, providing that there is somewhere for it to shelterwhen it rains and at night. Your goat will gather a lot of its


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own food, but reckon on providing concentrates all the year-round and bulk food in the winter. (For an explanation ofbulk foods and koncentrates see below on feeding. )2. FENCEDIf you have 9 acre or more of decent grazing, your goatwill make the best use of it if you fence it into at least twosections, ideally more. Use the sections in rotation. Dep-ending on the acreage, you may have enough grass to makewinter hay or silage, which otherwise will have to bebought in or substituted for. On a very small acreage, ex-tra bulk food may also be needed in the summer. Concen-trates will be needed all the year. Most breeds of goatslike a variety of bulk foods, so you may have to bring intwigs, tree-leaves, garden waste etc. for them - that iswhy the Toggenburg is so well suited to this system - it isgenerally happy with just grass.3. ZERO GRAZINGA new system, labour saving and excellent if you are outall day, and one that produces big milk yields - but youshould not keep a single goat this way unless it is in sightof company a lot of the time. The idea is to provide housingwith feed-racks and a straw covered sleeping area togetherwith an outside concrete run attached. All food is broughtin to the goat, so it wastes no energy in gathering and verylittle in keeping warm. Much more is therefore convertedinto milk. Surprisingly, goats thrive under this system andproduce splendid yields. It does not sound very laboursaving but proponents claim that it is easier to mechanic-ally cut and gather a row of grass every day than it is tomaintain and move electric fences in such a way as to makeequally efficient use of limited gra! : g space.CONFINING YOUR GOATThe goat is an inquisitive animal, fond of eat.ing all sorts


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of plants you would rather she did not - like prize rose-buds about to bloom, or your neighbours field of kale -so she usually needs to be confined. You can either tetheror fence her. The trouble with tethering is the labour in-volved. You have to move her each day to a piece of groundsoft enough to take the tethering stake and hard enough sothat she will not pull it out. Then when it rains you have totake her in, or move a little portable shelter each day aswell. In our opiion, tethering, though widely practised,is a lousy way of confining goats. The real way is to fence.Non-electric fences have to be four foot high to contain agoat effectively, with posts every six feet. They should beconstructed of sheep fencing, or chain link, but not barbedwire. Now this kind of fencing has, of late, become en-ormously expensive, even if you construct it yourself. Sowe would only recommend it for zero-grazing exerciseyards or for permanent fencing near to the goat shed. Forother situations, electric fencing is the cheapest solutionand probably the most secure. Its only disadvantage is thePabar involved in maintaining it.An alectric fence for goats consists of three strands - oneat g-t-eye height; one just below goat-belly height, andone half way between the other two. It is cheaper to makeyour own posts and buy just the insulators, but follow theinstructions of the fencing power-unit manufacturers.Most units go Vblipf every second regardless, but modernelectronics plus the inventiveness of a retired dairy farmerin Lancashire have now made available a unit that only goesblip when the goat touches - clearly, much, much moreeconomical to run and about the same price to buy. This isthe Rossendale (Rossendale Electric Fencers, RossendaleLanes.).Goats are stubborn and determined animals, once theydecide they would like to get outside their field. To getyour goat to respect the electric fence, you will have towait until it is beyond the playful kid stage. Then get aneighbour or friend to hold its mouth around the fence wire


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for Lhree or four good jolts. Unless it is a very stubborngoat, it will not go within a foot of the wire again - ever,Nor will it go near the person who held it - that it why it i5not a job to do yourself.The problem with electric fences is that if t1x bottomstrand touches wet grass, it earths and wastes electricitycontinuously. Cows conveniently reach under the fence andmunch as far as they are able to reach without getting ashock, but goats are too careful to risk that kind of unplsa-santness. So you have to go round with a pia0 of gardenshears every so often cutting back potential earthing gra SF.Some power-units, including the Rossendale, flash lightswhen earthing is happening, so if you check every day, youneed only to cut back the grass when it is actually causinga short circuit,HOUSING kOUR GOATIf you are using zero-grazing, you will need a large goat-house with room for the animal to wander round - a min-imum of one hundred square feet. Otherwise, if the houseis merely to be used as a rain shelter and sleeping quartersa goat can manage with something a quhrter the size, butit is convenient to have a shed big enough to do your milk-ing in as well, and to store your feeds, (but in 100% goat-proof part of the shed - over eating can easily kill yourgoat), so we would advise something about 5ft. x loft. atthe smallest. If the shed is wood, we suggest that it shouldbe double-walled with some form of insulation between.Storing hay above the goat area if both convenient and in-sulating for the goat. The shed should be light and well-ventilated.The floor is easiest if made in concrete. If you lay a damp-course below the concrete, and lay a thin top lay of strongconcrete directly over a two inch layer of polystyrene in-sulation, you can get away without straw bedding. The con-crete floor is then warm enough for the goat to lie down on


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directly. If the floor is made to slope gently to a gully atone wall, which itself drains outside the shed into eithera septic tank or a regularly-emptied garden manure tank,then the floor can be swept clean every morning with littletrouble. Mucking out straw bedding is a job you do not haveto do often, but it is a messy business. Even if you do usestraw, though, the slope-plus-gully design helps to keepthe straw dry for longer.

WAVE-MORE-PLAN 6AThe housing should include provision for feeding concen-trates and bulk feed and drinking water, Buckets for con-centrates and water should be held so that they cannot bekicked over or trodden in. Bulk feeds are best fed in wallmounted feed racks - made out of rope netting, wood slatsor wide metal wire-mesh - all of which allow the goat topull down hay etc. in a way that comes naturally to a treebrowsing animal.When designing your feed racks, there is one detail youshould allow for. Goats are fussy - they ignore even the


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tastiest food once it has fallen on the floor, yet having nohands to manipulate hay and the like, they inevitably dropa sizeable proportion of what they pull down to eat. Theanswer is to arrange for any food that drops from the rackto fall where it cannot be fouled, and where it can be coll-ected later to be put back up in the racks.OTHER EQUIPMENT YOU WILL NEEDGoats are rather low animals, so we recommend some sortof milking platform. It should be at easy sitting height andjust big enough for the goat to stand on comfortably, butnot big enough to let her move around and make milkingdifficult. There should be some arrangement for holding ortying her head at one end - a moveable vertical bar holdingher at the neck works well. The alternative is to feed herthe concentrates while she is being milked - that will keepher occupied. Apart from that, all you really need is amilking bucket, but it must be stainless steel. Optionalextras include a leather goat collar, a wall mounted bucketholder, a hoof paring knife, a coat for when she is sick,and Swiss type goat bells, all of which can be purchasedfrom Fred Ritson, The Goat Appliance Works, Longtown,Carlisle CA6. For the modern automated goat, you can goin for a milking machine with special goat-sized teat-cups +which will cost you about two hundred pounds complete,but that is for later. This equipment is made by Gascoignesand is available through agricultural suppliers.


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We cannot hope to do much more than introduce you to thebasic techniques of feeding in this book, but we want toemphasise that, economically, this is the part of backyarddairying that matters most. Last winter, there were somegoat keepers lashing out more than one pound per bale ofhay and ending up paying well over the subsidised 5$p perpint for their milk. Others were carefully tuned in toavail-able local wastes and were producing very cheap milk.Unless you have got enough land for winter and summerbulk food, backyard dairying is essentially a waste-disposalindustry. Putting it another way, if you have too little landyourself to feed the goat, find an undervalued product ofsomeone elses land to supplement it. You are convertingthings like barley straw, which you see farmers burningevery summer, into ridh nutritious milk. The goat is yourconvertion apparatus. What wastes should you start look-ing for? Use your Yellow Pages to probe local sources of:- Pea haulms and pods (cannery waste which can bedried or made into silage).- Barley straw.- Bean straw, oat chaff etc. (less palatable thanbarley straw, but usable).


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- Cornflour residue.- Brewers or distillers grains.- Sugar-beet pulp.- Fruit canning and jam making wastes.The basic principle of feeding is that a goat uses food fortwo purposes. Firstly, for the maintenance of her own bodyand necessary functions and secondly, for the production ofmilk. The quantities of nutrients required :for maintenancedepend primarily upon the weight of the goat, though theyare, of course, affected by the temperature in which shelives and the amount of walking she does. The quantitiesrequired for milk production depend essentially upon thequantity of milk being produced. Now, in common withother animals, the goat needs a combination of variousnutrients for both purposes: starch, protein, vitamins,minerals etc., and it would take a computer-controlledfeed rationing machine to get them all dead right every day.For simplicity, farmers usually concentrate their effortson the two most important: starch and protein.


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According to Mackensie, a goat needs for maintenance 0.91bof starch equivalent and 0.091b of digestible protein per dayper 1OOlb of bodyweight. For milk production, she needs&addition, 3.251b of starch equivalent and 0.51b of digestibleprotein per day per gallon of milk being given. The starchequivalent and digestible protein contents of various food-stuffs can be found by looking up in tables. Mackensie s bookprovides an excellent one for goats, but the N.A. A. S. (theNational Agricultural Advisory Service) of the Ministry ofAgriculture also produces a set in leaflet form (See Refer-ence 7). First you work out how much starch equivalent anddigestible protein your goat needs per day and you then est-imate what she can probably get from grazing or browsing.On pasture, you should reckon she consumes 201b of grassand 1Olb of mixed tree leaves, gorse etc.. On rough land,


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reckon on her gathering 5-101b of heather tips, gorse orwhatever per day. Having then done that calculation, you canwork out what starch equivalent and digestible protein youwill need to supplement. See which foods give you the re-quired total for the least outlay. Find the cheapest local bulkfood available first and then supplement it with a concentrateto make up for low starch or protein. You can try challengefeeding. That means gradually increasing the concentrateration until the milk yield stops increasing. In practice, ifyou stay a week at a time at each level, you can judge prettywell after a few weeks what the right level is.Apart from protein and starch, your goat will need mineralsand water. Vi+&mins are not really a problem in goat hus-bandry. Minerals are usually provided by giving the goat amineral lick in its shed. These are available from any localfeed merchant. The goat takes a lick when it feels a need.Most mineral problems in goats are prob2ems of imbalanceor excess. Calcium and phosphorus are the two main mineralneeds and should be balanced. Some goatkeepers favour pro-viding licks or boxes of powder for each of the essentialminerals separately, on the theory that the goat balances herown diet that way.What we have said so far seems to suggest keeping the foodrations constant throughout the year. That is not the bestplan. Nor can you hope, by subtle feed-boosting, to get yourgoat to defy na,ture and produce a steady volume of milkthroughout the year. One might expect a goats feed needs tofluctuate in tune with the seasonal availability of foodstuffs.Well, they do and they dont. The trouble is that most birthsare in February or March, so that in fact the goat in kid ,needs steadily more and more to eat from November onwards.After April, her appetite gradually declines again.

Textbooks on authorship say that it is very bad practice torefer your readers to another book on your subject beta-~.sewhat they are reading should be complete in itself. The


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COLMS OF RYE,

fact is however that as a text-book on the details of goat-keeping, Mackensie s GoatHusbandry is on its own. Itwould be presumptuous of usto attempt to better it. Any-way that is not the purpose ofthis book. We have no hesita-tion in advising every would-be goatkeeper to get himselfa copy of this excellent work.POISOXOUS PLANTSYou should be aware that thefollowing plants are poiaonousto goats and cows:- Laburnum- Rhododendron- Yew- Beet and Mangold leavesFor antidotes, consult Mac-kensie or your local vet. Amore comprehensive list ofpoisonous plants appears ina pamphlet Wild Food forGoats recently published bythe British Goat Society, atfive pence. Many plants affectthe taste of milk, butter andcheese. If you suspect thatyour milk is tainted the Min-istry of Agriculture BulletinNo. 161 might be of help toyou. In it there is a chartwhich relates various plantsto the effect they have on milkbutter and cheese. 37


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\ J J I- vwmbs, t4- / --T--Y91


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Milking is fairly simple to master on most cows or goats,although there are individual animals that are very difficultmilkers. The principle is to block off the teat, full of milk,from the udder by squeezing with the index finger and thumb,and then i;o follow this with a squeezing downwards and outof the milk trapped in the teat, using the other three fingers.Unless you cut off the milk in the teat from getting back intothe udder, no amount of squeezing will get much milk to flaw.After practice, the action simplifies into an even squeezingdownwards from index to little finger. The trouble is thatthis feels wrong at first. The natural tendency is to want tostart sqdsezing with the little finger. Once you get over this,you should be alright. If not, you may have a difficult anim-al and therefore you should seek advice.Here are some more tips:

- Let the first squirt from each teat go outside thebucket. This avoids using old milk too long in theteat.- Massage the udder thoroughly to persuade all themilk down.- Start using both hands. Do not be tempted to learnone hand at a time.


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- Do not squeeze above the actual teat. This candamage the tissues of the lower udder.- Clean a cows udder before milking, using a swabwith warm water. A goats udder does not usuallyneed cleaning before milking.

Although goats and cows produce best if milked twice a day,as near to every twelve hours as possible, the backyardercan make do with less production, if he so wishes, and milkjust once a day for convenience. A half-way house to thisapproach is to use a cow partly as a milker and partly tosuckle and rear calves for eating. You take the morningmilk, having kept the calf out of reach of the udder over-r.@ht, and let the calf take the evening milk -a


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This section should be read in conjunction with what has al-ready been said with reference to goats. We are assumingthat you are already a goatkeeper and are about to move upto Stage Two and obtain a house cow.WHAT COW TO EUY?

We would not recommend the inexperienced to get his firstcow from a cattle market. There are no cow equivalents ofthe goat societies listed, although you may well, as a goat-keeper, have made contact through your society, with housecow owners. The other good source of help is the localagricultural vet who you will also have met as a goatkeeper.He will know a lot about the local dairy herds and, if you arelucky, could put you in touch with someone with a suitablecow to sell. An idea worth considering is to start with afairly elderly cow from a commercial herd. She is perhapsno longer giving enough milk for the herdsman to keep heron, but she could be ideal for you. Scout around and seewhat you can find. If the first vet is unhelpful, try another.The vet will help you, too, in making sure that the cow orcalf is TT-tested, vaccinated against brucellosis and free of


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mastitis. Do not be put off by all this talk of diseases. Theyare all fairly well under control now in the UK.In our experience, there are only three reeds worth con-sidering for a milking house cow.

* THE JERSEY is the beauti -eyed cow of cows.It is small, manageable and docile reduces thecreamiest milk of all. It is as irresi Pe a pet as a Siam-ese cat. Its disadvantage is that her calves will not pro-duce saleable meat. There is nothing wrong with the meatbut there is not much of it and the fat is yellow. The house-wife will not buy yellow-fat meat. HoweaVer, if you are happyto consume all surplus bull-calves yourself, why worry?* THE GUERNSEY is very simil r but slightly biggerand it gives better yields although the milk is less creamy,However the cream content is still above the average. It issaid to be less temperamental than Jerseys, although wehave yet to hear of temperament trouble in a Jersey.* THE DEXTER is the mini-cow which was the trad-itional house cow of the Irish peasant. It has short legs, isblack and rather unattractive. On average it stands 39 tothe shoulder. It is a very practical little house cow becauseit will eat just about anything that a goat will and manage, ofcourse, on less than a full-sized cow. The meat is firstclass and produces small joints much in demand of house-wives.It all depends upon t our circumstances and requirements.Jerseys and Guernseys thrive on good quality pasture, hayand silage. They need their own land. Dexters are moreadaptable and can be used, like goats, partly as convertersof wastes from somebody elses land, although they shouldhave acces to fresh grass for at least some of the year. Theyalso give less daunting volumes of milk, particularly in thesummer. The trouble is that there are very few Dextersstill around but if you should decide upon one then contactThe Dexter Cattle Society at Lomand, Seckington Lane,Newton Regis, Tamworth, Staffs. You should not have toomuch difficulty tracing either Jerseys or Guernseys locally.


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HOUSING AND MANAGEMENTThe three basic systems apply, although rough moorlandgrazing would only really suit the Dexter.

CONFINING THE COW

Cows are less likely than goats to be attracted out of a fieldby tasty bushes and trees, but, if they are lonely or on heatand can hear other cows, they can be almost as energetic intheir attempts to get out a Give a single house cow plenty ofyour company and affection and keep her well confined dur-ing heat* Then ordinary farm fences and hedges should be


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enough, although electric fencing allows you great flexibilityin rotating your available grazing. Cows need less drastictraining onto electric fences than goats. Put some tasty foodon the other side of the fence whilst you watch. A few joltsand she will get the message.HOUSING THE COWAgain the needs are similar - just larger. The great advant-age, however, is that a cow can happily be left out summerand winter, day and night, if you so wish. Milking can alsobe done outside, but it is as well to do it under cover in thewetter weather.FEEDINGThe same principles apply as before, although Jerseys andGuernseys are much more fussy about wastes. For thesebreeds, hay and silage are the only really acceptable bulkfeeds.Unfortunately there is no bovine equivalent to Mackensies Goat Husbandry . The book that comes nearest in our opin-ion is Newman Turners l Herdsmanship, also published inthe UK by Faber and Faber. Although this book is designedfor the commercial dairy herd owner, its approach is org-anic and there is plenty of useful information for the onecow beginner, Unfortunately this book is now out of print butyour public library should be able to locate a copy for you toloan. Another helpful book to as your library for is KennethRussells Principles of Dairy Farming. The Ministry ofAgriculture also do a useful bulletin called Rations for Live-stock.SHARING THE LOADWe have already emphasised what a tie it is having either agoat or a cow. Having a cow, you are also faced with havingto make use of pretty large quantities of milk. Unless you


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have got all the attributes of an officially approved &Gry,you are not permitted to sell the milk. But what is wrongwith owning a cow in partnership with friends? A good schemewe know of is run by two couples, one with two acres and theother in the nearby town. They share the milk and the feedbill half and half but, for their work, the country people getthe calf every year as well. The only drawback to this ideais that you must have some method of getting the milk toyour partners cheaply at least every other day.


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Milk is a pretty good food as it is. In fact, there are someprimitive peoples who live on virtually nothing else. So whybother converting it into other things? The traditional reasonmust have been to produce from it foods that could be keptfor the winter, but nowadays this reason hardly applies sinceadequate supplies of milk are commercially available all theyear round. No, butter and cheese are still made toclay be-cause they represent concentrated sources of fats and pro-teins which it is economic to transport over longer distancesthan milk and because they have their own consistencies andflavours prized independently of milk.The backyard dairyman can, if he so wishes, obtain ex-cellent year-round food from milk alone (assuming he hasplenty of winter feed for his animal) but butter and cheesewill further enr+ch nis life. Not only that, but instead ofthrowing the inevitable surplus summer milk to the pigs orchickens, it can be converted into concentrated foods whichcan be stored.But dairy work is time consuming. It has to be done withreasonably fresh milk, of which the home dairymen willhave Limited quantities, and the trouble is that it takesalmost as long to make butter and cheese from five gallonsof milk as from fifty. So is it worth it? At todays subsid-ised prices, you get a low return on y@Jr labour time formaking your own. But they will be supe,rior, after practice,and greatly satisfying. Cheese making is as absorbing ahobby as home wine making and, in many ways, very sim-ilar .


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HOW IS iMILK PIXODUCFD ?Milk is produced by all mammals as a food for their young,during the early part of their lives when their digestivesystems are not able to take other foods. It is manufacturedin the mammary gland of the mother animal. Production isinduced just before the mother gives birth - ready to give theyoung their important first food. Actually, this first milk israther special. It is called beistyn - it is golden yellow andas thick as double cream. It is designed to clear the insidetracts of the newborn animal. In England, there is an old lawthat beistyn must not be sold, but often a cow or goat willproduce more than the infant animal needs. Even diluted oneto four with ordinary milk, it will set Like an egg custard.The taste of beistyn is an added bonus for the home dairyproducer.Production of milk continues regularly in the mother animalfor a period known as the lactation period. This varies con-siderably in length, but the point is that if you want youranimal to continue giving you milk, you must have it matedreguIarly to make sure that it stays in milk for a good pro-portion of its life. Although both cows and goats have been


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known to continue a single lactation for three years and longer,most people reckon it is safer to get the animal pregnantregularly every year.An animal will only stay in milk so long as all the milk sh.eproduces is being used. This is naturefs regulating system.In the normal course of events, the mother would thus onlycontinue giving milk until its young start eating other foods.If you mipk, f.hp enin~l dry twice every day, she will continueto produce a good quantity for longer, but you must kee:pmilking dry - known as stripping.The mother can only really be milked if the udder is letdown. Some outside stimulus, such as the cry of its youngor the arrival of its owner, induces the production of $5hormone, oxytocin, in the pituitary. It takes about ant:! min-ute in a cow for the oxytocin to reach the udder and ca,use themuscles to relax to let down the milk. The hormone cr:)nt-inues to be sent down for about a further eight minutes, dur-ing which time you should have completed the milking. Theimportant thing is not to stop for breaks. Once you start,you -have to carry on until the animal is dry.The process of milk production in the udder is not yet fullyunderstood, but it appears to be a combination of filtrationof certain constituents from the blood&ream, cell degener-ation and most important of all, synthesis of other constit-uents by cell metabolism.The simplest mammary gland known is that of the Australianduckbill platypus, where droplets of milk ooze out of a smallhole onto the animals hair, where they are licked off by thebaby platypus. The udders of the goat and cow are far moredeveloped, with milk tracts leading down from the main pro-ducing tissues in the gland, contained in the milk sac, to areservoir just inside from the teat. The teat is a sort ofautomatic portion dispenser, like those used in bars forspirits, making sure that the infant only gets down as muchmilk as he can swallow comfortably. The udder of the cow is


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divided by thin membranes into four quarters, each with itsown teat and each needing to be milked separately. The udderof the goat is divided into two sections.

WHAT IS MILK?Milk is an oil-water emulsion, the continuous phase beingaqueous. l (see Reference 16) That means that it consists ofwater with certain substances dissolved in it, plus little fatglobules floating around in it. The proportions of the variousconstituents in milk vary considerably, but an average make-up of scientifically analysable materials is:

87% water.4% fat.5% milk-sugar or lactose.3% caesin.#!!$I lbumin.(These last two are the proteins in milk.)

In addition, there are bacteria, many of which arrive in themilk during and after milking, some of which are useful inthe human stomach or in the process of cheese making, butothers of which are harmful. There are probably also loadsof trace elements in milk, necessary for good nutrition butnot easily analysed out. Milk is known to be rich in calciumand in vitamins A and B. It also contains phosphorus, pot-assium , iron and vitamins C and D.WHAT IS CREAM ?The little fat globules rise to the surface of settled milk andform cream. Eventually, the fat globules will settle at acertain concentration at the top of the milk and the familiarcream line appears. This process can be speeded up in acentrifugal separator,, The butterfat content of cream is veryvariable - between 10 and 65% fat, but 45-550/o fat is a morenormal level.50


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The %uttermilk, left behind after the butter separates out,is made up of:90% water.

5-g milk- sugar.4% milk-proteins.1% butterfat.WHAT IS CHEESE ?If the acidity of milk is increased, the separate particles,particularly of milk protein, coagulate together into a jelly-like or custard-like substance called curd. A great deal ofthe water and a little of the dissolved substances separateout into a greenish watery liquid called whey. This separa-tion takes place more easily at above sixty degrees Fahren-heit. The increase in acidity can be achieved by one of threemethods.1. Simply add an edible acid, such as lemon juice orvinemr, to warm milk.2. Let warm milk stand where it stays warm. Littleorganisms in the milk (Streptococcus Lacticus) convert themilk sugar, lactose, into lactic acid and hey presto, themilk curdles by itself. But if you leave it too long, anotherload of organisms take over and turn it into bad milk, sotake care.3. The conversion of lactose to lactic acid can alsobe achieved by using enzymes. Rennet is the usual one emp-loyed, It is taken from the stomachs of calves and processedcommercially. Very small amounts of commercial rennetadded to warm milk will produce curd.To make cheese, the curd is separated from the whey. It isthen eaten fresh as soft cheese, or pressed into moulds todry out the whey and water completely thereby leaving it ina form which will keep for longer.Cheeses vary enormously in composition but here is a rough


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guide: % Camembert CheddarWater 45-51 27-34Fat 21-30 26-30Proteins 18-23 27-40Lactic Acid 0.5 1.5(from Richmonds Dairy Chemistry)Cheese is valuable, not merely as a way of storing milk forwinter, but in its own right as a concentrated protein food.The other great thing about cheese is that you can make somany delicious variations.There are plenty of variables in cheese making:- the method of increasing the acidity.- the temperature at which the curd is formed.- the acidity at which it is formed.- whether is heat is used to produce further

separation.- how much heat and for how long.- whether the cheese is pressed.- under what pressure and for how long.- whether the cheese is affected by other bacteria.We will have more to say about the use of these variablesin re-creating famous traditional cheeses later in the book.


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Cows miik separates into cream and skimmed milk fairlyeasily under the action of gravity alone. Goat% milk doesnot and the only effective way of producing fresh cream fromgoats milk is by means of a separator. Frankly, this is abore. But if you are a goatkeeper and sufficiently interestedin cream, then try to pick up an old farm hand-rseparator byasking around at local farms or by advertising. The cheapestnew separator still made is a seven gallon model at overthree hundred pounds - out of the question.Before you buy an old one, make sure that the tinning is un-broken and that alI the cones are there still. The separatorgives 99% of the available cream and you can adjust it forthe thickness of cream you want, The trouble is that eventhe simplest machine has about twenty three different parts,all metal, which need to be washed in soda and sterilisedafter each use. Even if you use a dairy disinfectant ratherthan boil the components, it is quite a chore when theamountof cream involved is small.If you are the happy owner of a cow, then cream making issimple. There are two methods for home production.


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-SECTIOS OF SEPARATOR.

THE SETTLING PAN METHOD. You need a big wideshallow pan (not plastic), and a cream scoop (a saucer willdo), to draw off the cream once it has settled. Leave it fortwenty four hours in a cool place (longer for goats milk),then skim off the cream, starting by breaking it off at theedges of the pan first. It comes off like a thick skin. Thismethod gives you around 90% of the potential cream avail-able. It needs very little equipment, but quite a bit of coolshelf space.


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THE SYPHON METHOD. (This was developed by LenStreet). For this you need gallon jars, preferably catererssalad cream jars because they have wide necks, and a winesyphon from Boots or other chemists. Slice an oblique cutat the end of the plastic pipe on the syphon. Keep the milkin your gallon jars for twenty four hours in a cool place.Then slide the syphon pipe down inside the edge of the jarpast the cream layer to the bottom of the skim milk below.Syphon off the skim milk , finishing with the jar tilted overuntil you reach the visible cream line. You are left withcream in your jar. This method involves less storage spaceand the equipment is easier to get than a settling pan , but itis a bit more fiddly .Of these methods we favour the syphon. The jars can beplaced straight in the fridge; This speeds settling and givesa better-tasting cream than the settling pan method, becausethe large surface area of the milk in a pan tends to pick uptaints.If you have a fridge, there is no need to make cream everyday. The milk will store for three or four days, so you canget away with making cream twice a week if you wish. Howmuch cream you get varies, but it takes about eight to tenpints of milk to give one pint of cream.The skim milk can be drunk fresh, but if you have enoughwhole milk left over for drinking, you wont want to botherwith the thinner stuff. It is an excellent food for feeding tocalves, kids, chickens, pigs and other animals. Other thanthat, it is fine for turning into yogourt or skim milk cheese(see recipes later on).

CLOTTED CREAMClotted cream makes a pleasant change for cream teas andthe like. It keeps longer then fresh cream and so is betterfor butter making. It means you can spread your butter-


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making sessions out to once a week or more. You may findthat clotted cream is the only foundation that works for but-ter-making when the milk starts to get thin in the autumn,If you keep a goat, clotted cream is the only type you canmake without a separator.Stand the milk in a heatproof pan to a depth of six to eightinches, in a cool place for 24 hours. Transfer the pan gin-gerly to your stove and heat up gently to 150-17OF for useas clotted cream. It will form a ring at the edge of the pan,and the cream will split away. Let the pan stand to cool for12 hours, then skim off the cream, It is not a lot of work,but it does take a long time.

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11 butter

\vORKING THE &!TTER

Here is a very simple butter-making method from JimPlatts of Willingham, Cambs:(We dont own a milking animal. We buy ordinarymiI~ (not Gold Top) and take the cream off eachbottle using a 5ml. plastic syringe. (Your doctorwill throw away several of these every day). Weput the cream in a two pound Kilner jar (the widetop makes it easy to get the butter out), and whenit is half full, we stand it near the fire until it isjust warm to the touch. Then we shake it by hand


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until pellets of butter form. We reckon usually onless than five minutes shaking, and a yield of Qoz.of butter per pint of milk. We produce as muchbutter as we want from our weekly milk supply.

Now, for those that want it, here is a little more detail,and some ideas on scaling up the process to use kitchenmachinery. There are three types of cream that can beused to make butter.FRESH CREAM is fine if kept refrigerated prior to butter-making. Alternatively, it can be kept by adding at least 8%by weight of salt - but this produces a very sally butter notto everyone 8 liking.CLOTTED CREAM keeps well before the next butter-makingsession anti the taste of the butter obtained is particularlyliked oace people get used to it.SGVUREDCREAM (or Ripened Cream) makes a butter with adistinctive soured flavour. Making butter with soured creamis easier - it turns granular more quickly. For a start, wesuggest you have a go with fresh cream. If you experiencedifficulties, or feel like a bit of variety, try one of the othertwo.60


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Keep the cream goad and cool before butter-making. Thereis n&&g to 3eat a fridge. Leave at least twenty four hoursbetween the last addition of cream and the butter-makingsession. Stir the cream jar well each time you add a newload of cream.You do not need to use a special butter churn for butter-making, but they are good for larger quantities. If you donot want to track down a churn, and if you are lucky enoughto have an electric food mixer, then you have got nothing toworry about. But first get your cream to the right churningtemperature:52-60F in hot summer weather58-66F in cooler weatherFor this, we suggest you invest in a proper dairy thermo-meter ,.Take % cupful of the thickest cream first spoon it intothe mixer, working at a slow speed (arou 0 r.p.m. 3,with a cake-mixer head fixed. The bowl a head should becold. Watch until patterns are made, rather like those thatappear with whipped cream, then add anot er cupful of thecream and repeat until alI the cream is in Carry onmix-ing until the colour changes to golden yellow, and then un-til the wheat-sized granules of butter are

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You can then just squ,, oze the butter-milk out in a muslinbag. This will remove most of it and give you butter finefor the next weeks use, but if you want something you canstore, refrigerated, for months, you had better wash itand work it well.To wash the butter, you will need water at about the sametemperature as the buttermilk. Pour some into the grallu-Par butter in your bowl and carefully fold the granules overto wash out all the buttermilk. Strain off the wash-waterand repeat until it stays pretty clear. You will probablyneed about five washings to get to this stage.After the Aal &raining out, sprinkle on some salt if youlike - we suggest one dessertspoonful per pound of butter.For the really professional touch, add some annatto buttercolour - particularly if the butter looks less golden-yellowthan the shop-bought stuff you are used to. It probably willdo, except in the very best grazing periods of June andJuly. (See the cheese section for how to make your owncolourirlg - and for addresses of annaiio suppliers j.If you want the butter to keep, its water content should be


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NOVEL METHOD OF CHURNISG.

under 16%. Commercial butter is more likely to be around12%. To remove the water, work the butter. The simplestmethod to start with is to use a cutting-board and a strongwide-edged knife or spatula. Squeeze down the butter ontothe board, forming a thin layer. If you slope the board (say,on the edge of the draining board), the water you squeeze outwill run off immediately. Fold it over and repeat the squeez-ing down, without rubbing or smearing the butter. Keep itfairly cool during working and keep going until you really arenot getting much more out. Later on, you may feel like buy-ing or constructing something more elaborate in the way of abutterworker, but that is beyond the scope of this book.Whatever you use, keep it spotlessly clean. It is best to keepa special board for working, rather than the one you usedyesterday for crushing the garlic. 63


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BUTTER MAKING PROBLEMSThere is really only one big problem that occurs in buttermaking and that is for one of many reasons, the butter justdoes not come1 in 20-30 minutes, If 40 minutes have passedand you have still got white cream, it could be for one of thefollowing reasons:* Your cream is too warm or too cold - sometimesin winter it really needs to go up to 65-70 F.* Your equipment may not be really clean and sterile.This may cause what is known as ropy ferment-ation .* The animal may be almost through her lactation -in which case, butter is harder to make.Here are a couple of other tips we have heard but not fullytested out. If goats cream gives you trouble getting too biga granule size, add a cupful of water per one and a quarterpints of cream as soon as the granules appear. Also, it issaid that thinner cream is better in summer and thickercream is better in winter,Do not throw away the buttermilk. It contains the milk-sugarand milk-proteins. Drink it fresh, use it for bread makinginstead of water, or make cultured buttermilk, a fine-tastingproduct which you pay heavily for in the shops. Add one partof ready- cultured buttermilk, either from a previous loador shop-bought, to eight parts of nety buttermilk. Let itthicken in a warm place and then store it in the fridge. Alt-ernatively, you can use a commercial starter or lactic acidstarter, which has the advantage of keeping longer.

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cheese ductiat home

MILK IS IMMORTALISED IN CHEESE (Enoch Powell)As children of the super-industrial state we have been- cond-itioned to the standardised artificially cultured cheese ofuniform flavour and consistency. But just consider, beforeyou start home production, how things were before the Ind-ustrial Revolution. Each cheese depended upon the qualityof pasture, both in terms of its geography and its season; itdepended upon the size of the farm and whether or not thecheese was made for sale (in which case, eqen tklen, it tadto be more uniform). This infinite variety was at the basisof the many f standard varieties of cheese produced now inrigidly controlled conditions to ape the way the cheese cameout naturally from certain farms.For instance, moorland cheese was only made in Spring,when the cows emerged from winter quarters and grazed onthe young scented herbs and grasses of the moors. Th& dietcleared their blood and they gave a delicious casein-richmilk which in turn produced a beautiful,light textured, bluecheese. The moorland people would never have dreamed of


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making this cheese at any Dther time of the year - but acheese factory has to keep going throughout the year.Take another case. T%e blue-veined Stilton depends for thiseffect on the action of the mould Penicillium Roqueforti. Thecheese rooms in the Stilton district of Leicestershire werewell infected with this mould and the process carried onnaturally. Nowadays, the milk for Stilton making is heatedto destroy the existing organisms in the milk. PenicilliumRoqueforti is then injected in measured quantities to ape theconditions of these old Leicestershire cheese rooms.The point is that the characteristics of each local type ofcheese depended originally upon the peculiarities of the localconditions to a very large degree. We could, in this book,give you a great stream of recipes telling you how to ape thelocal cheeses of evry district of England, France and therest of the World. Instead we have chosen to introduce thebasic processes common to most cheese making, plus somevariations developed in certain areas and worth a try in yourdairy. We hope this will spur you on to produce unique indiv-idual cheese which varies over the year and with your ex-periments. Maybe, after a while, you will decide to stick toa particular variant which pleases you best.We have already been through the basic chemistry of turningmilk into cheese. Now we will proceed to some practicalrecipes for making cheeses. You will remember that therewere three ways of creating the necessary acidity for curdformation. Here are basic recipes for each way:

ADDING ACID. This is the method used for cheesemaking in India. It produces a soft, rubbery cheese calledPanirf which is chopped into 2 x 2 x if blocks, fried oradded to curries. Panir is also used to make certain Indiansweets.Heat one and a half pints of milk, stirring, to boiling point.Remove it from the heat and add quarter of a teaspoonful oftartaric acid (Cream of Tartar) dissolved in a cup of hot66


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water. Stir until the whole of the milk curdles. Leave it forfifteen minutes covered and then strainit through muslin andsqueeze out all the whey. At this stage ii; is called Chenna .To make Pani?, keep it in the muslin, tied tight and placeit under a 51b weight for two hours. For more details on howto use this in Indian cookery, get hold of Mrs. Balbir Singh sIndian Cookery, published by Mills and Boon,LETTING THE MILK SOUR. This is the method be-hind all the various so-called lactic cheeses (meaningcheeses soured by lactic acid rather than rennet). It is asimple method for the home production of very pleasant softcream cheese. This can be made from ordinary soured wholemilk or from soured buttermilk, or from yogurt. Any ofthese substances, as long as they are thick, can be drained

in a muslin or cheesecloth bag to produce a form of softcheese. It helps to open the bag after half an hour and remix%he ontents. Repeat this again after another hour. By doingthis, a more even, creamy cheese is produced. After that,there are further possible variations. You can press thecheese between plates for an hour or so, or add some freshcream until the cheese works up into a fine pat of creamcheese. Salt the cheese %o our taste and maybe endup byadding some form of extra flavour. The possibilities hereare endless. Try starting with chives, wine (stirred in),orange slices or chopped nuts.The cheese made by draining yogurt overnight is very pop-ular in Germany under the name of Quark, and is quite del-icious used as we would use whipped cream on fruit.

ADDING RENNET. This is the method for all hardand semi-soft cheeses and for a lot of the better soft cheeses.This is where cheese making gets interesting but rathercomplex. However lets start with a very popular Frenchcream cheese called Gervais.For every gallon of milk, ysu will need a quart of cream.

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Mix them and heat to 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit while stir-ring. Add *cc of commercial rennet diluted f:6 with water.Stir for 3-4 minutes and then leave for ten minutes. Ripplethe surface with your fingers for about one minute. Thisprevents a skin of cream forming but allows curdling toproceed. Ripple again after thirty and sixty minutes. Thenleave it overnight for twelve hours at 60-65 degrees Fahr-enheit. In the morning it should be nicely set. Ladle it intoa cheesecloth bag and let it drip for thirty minutes. Mix thecontents and re-hang it. Mix it every hour for six to twelvehours until it has the firmuess of Gervais. Salt it to yourtaste and finger-press it to the shapes you want. Store themin foil in your fridge. It is best to eat aft& a week,This recipe is based on a master recipe for cream cheesein John Ehles Cheeses and Wines of England and France,a unique book on home cheese making with excellent recipesfor all the well known types. It is published in the USA byHarper and Row. Lets hope that it will be available soonover here.

CURISG-HOWE, WHITESJORO CHEESE r~mon~.


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This basic recipe can be varied. It can be made withoutcream or with more rennet and thus less setting time. Ringthe changes as you wish.HARD CHEESEAlthough there are a great many variations, the making ofhard cheeses generally follow this basic ten step pattern.1. RIPENING THE MILK. This is a delicate process and onewhere you will need to experiment according to your ownconditions and tastes. If you let the milk sour too much, youmay end up with a curd which is an acid curd/rennet curdmixture, difficult to ripen. If you use milk too fresh, theacidity is inadequate for the rennet to have the desired effect.The traditional farmhouse solution is to let the evening milkripen overnight at a temperature of 50-60 degreesF. In themorning, warm it and stir the cream back into the milk. Addthe fresh morning milk and your cheese making milk shouldbe about right. You can, alternatively, add comme:rcialstarter (lactic acid culture) to fresh milk and let it stand inthe warm to ripen it. Whatever you do, the milk should stilltaste sweet.2. COLOURING THE MILK. This is optional but red annattois added to certain cheeses. This is up to you. You couldexperiment with using saffron or marigold petals or the juicefrom pressed grated carrots. This is what used to happenbefore annatto wa8 imported.3. COAGULATING THE MILK WITH RENNET. Extract ofrennet is stirred in at around 85-90 degrees F for mostcheeses. Some cheeses are rennetted as high as 105 degreesFahrenheit. The usual practice is to add the required amountof rennet, diluted 1: 6 with warm water. So long as the acid-ity is right, this will produce a curd hard enough to hold thefat globules together without being tough. Rennet curd doesshrink naturally and this helps to expel the whey. The higher6


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the temperature and the acidity, the faster this shrinkingtakes place. If there is far too much acid in the milk, itwilleventually interfere with the shrinkage process and you endup with a nasty wet acid mess. Make sure that you stir therennet well in and then leave the milk *undisturbed at 85-90degrees F unti 1 it has set to the consistency of junket. Thismay take anything from fifteen to sixty minutes. The usualway to test curd is to poke your index finger under the surf-ace, then lift. If the surface breaks cleanly, then it is ready.Nowadays, you can buy acidmeters, which are miniaturetesting kits, easy to use, for testing the acidity of curd.Alternatively, John Ehle describes an old method based onsticking pieces of curd onto a hot iron. (See Reference 2 2)4. BREAKING THE CURD. You can leave the curd unbrokento drain, but the process is speeded up if you break the curdinto pieces. You get better results if you keep the pieces ofcurd even in size. Most English varieties of cheese are madewith quarter to half inch cubes. The illustration shows oneway of getting fairly even cutting with an ordinary kitchenknife.

.c~...- -- - -~---~ ~-T---

FOLLOW YOUR ORIG I NATCUTS AS NEARLY AS P35518LEI-iOLDlNG KNIFE ATLNGLE AsIN PO~IION NO 3 .- TUEN ASI!J . POSITIOblI.& .I . N0.U.* 1: I\ ,,,__...$.- _ .- - . . . . . . . ..,. .\

QOS

&-b !.- 5-- ,LITION 3 P!?S'T!ON 4

The difficulty of producing cubes of even size right the waydown can otherwise be achieved using a curd knife which isobtainable from Clares Carlton Ltd., Wells, Somerset.


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5. TREATING THE CURD. The purpose of this stage is tofirm the curd more effectively by heating it in the whey. Itis aiso to improve ~~~Ln drainage of the whey from the curd bykeeping the pieces of curd gently moving. You can carry outboth treatments at the same time, or separately. If youbreak the curd with a knife, it is perhaps better to start bystirring the curd gently with your hand for about fifteen min-utes. This way, you can check that the pieces are all fairlyeven and break up those that need it. Try to stir as gently aswill keep the curd pieces from sticking together. After this,you can heat the pan very gently to 100 degrees F over aboutan hour, stirring from time to time to keep the pieces fromsticking. The cur-d pieces should then have firmed up suffic-iently to fall apart in your hand without squeezing. If youkeep them at 102 degrees F for another hour, this will firmup the pieces even more so that a handful of pieces willshake apart after being pressed together in your hand, Thisee of separation you should aim at as a beginnerbefore you go on to drain the curds. Later you may wish toshortcut this rather long process. Do not leave the curds andwhey together too long because the acidity starts to rise andthe curds go wet and unmanageable.6. DRAINING OFF THE WHEY. This is most simply done bypouring the curds through muslin. The only skill is in dec-iding when the curds are ready to be drained.7. TREATING THE DBAINED CURD. This very importantstage determines to a large extent the final texture and ripe-ness of your cheese. The degree to which you further breakup the curdat this stage, by cutting or squeezing, determInesits texture. If you like crumbly cheese, keep the piecesloose. If you like it more resilient, squeeze the curds to-gether into more solid blocks. Before you do any of this,you must however salt the cheese. Cne tablespoon per six-teen pint load is a good starting guide. The main point ofadding salt at this stage is to stop the action of the acid-producing baccillae. For certain cheeses, you chop or millthe curd at this stage as well.


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8. FORMING THE PIECES INTO CHEESES. At home, thisis most easily done by forming a bandage of cheeseclotharcnmd a cake-shaped mass of curds about 6 across, andpinning the bandage in place. With a couple of thicknessesof cheesecloth above and below the cake, it is ready forpressing. Alternatively, you can make your own woodencheese mould out of wooden storage jars, available fromkitchen supply shop% with a few holes drilled in the sidesand bottom to drain out the whey. This kind of mould, how-ever, will not stand much pressure. You could also trymaking cheese moulds from old stainless steel saucepansor large food cans with holes drilled in them. Whatever youuse to contain the curds, make sure that they are packed inwell, with no cracks extending into the centre of the cheese.Again, the shape and size of the mould also depends uponv&ich regions.1 cheese you are trying to copy.

CHESHIRECwmE-Pms.

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9. PRESSING THE CHEESE. If you can get hold of an oldcheese press, so much the better. If not, any simple devicewill do, providing it gives an even down pressure onto thecheese, which continues to be even when the cheese shrinksdown. At its simplest, this can an empty can which slidesdown mto a- can mould, with two bricks placed on the innercan. The usual methods of pressing involve an initial press-ing (you can start with two bricks), then an upending of thecheese and a second pressing at a higher pressure (try fourbricks), The period of pressing can also vary, but we sugg-est you start with twelve hours at each pressure. Thisshould be fine for a small six inch cheese but naturally thecheese factories these days press their products under pre-ssures of several tons to speed up the process.10. RIPENING THE CHEESE. The fermentation processthat takes place at this stage can give the cheese a fine mel-low flavour or can spoil it completely. Be warned that, forno apparent reason your cheese may dry into a pile of acidcrumbs or it may stick to the shelf in a slimy mess, or itmay even roll off the sheX completely - propelled by thegas of its own fermentation.

The cheese should be transferred to a cool but frost freecellar or pantry. Beforehand, you may choose to protect thecheese once the rind is dry by painting on a layer of paraffinwax heated first in a double saucepan. You can also use lardor cornflour. Ripening cheese should be turned regularlyevery day for the first few days, then every other day untilthe cheese is hard and ready - usually in three or fourweeks. You can taste it at intervals, if you wish, by takingout a small piece with an apple corer. Make sure you putback the outer plug, and seal the wound again with wax,lard or cornflour. Most cheeses are best then left until atleast two months old.RINGING SOME CHANGES

* Add butter to the drained curds 73


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* Try green cheese that is cheese freshly pressedbut not ripened.* Put leaves inside the press before you fill it withcurds: dock leaves, nettles, vine leaves are somewhich are used to wrap cheese.* Try letting some of your cheeses go blue byleaving them up to six months. Depending uponthe organisms present in your pantry, interestingmay start to happen.* When salting, grate some cheese of the desiredtype into the curds. This sets up a good bacterialgrowth for the ripening stage.If you are a vegetarian, you may want to try using caseinrennet rather than the usual stuff. We found this recipe formaking your own:Set six pint& of milk as for clotted cream. Skim thecream off. Add two tablespoons of vinegar to theskim milk and heat it until it curds thoroughly. Washthe curd in water three or four times, kneadingthoroughly. Dry the curd and powder it. This powderis almost pure casein.

SIMPLE CHEESE-PRESS.


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SCPPLIESWe know of only one supplier of a good range of equipmentfor home cheese making:

C ares Carlton Limited,Wells, Somerset BA5.or at:7, Winchester Avenue,Denny, Stirlingshire.curd knife

They supply acidmeters plus chemicals and spares, floatingdairy thermometers, cheese samplers, curd knives, shovels,scoops, whey bowls, textilesand Coulommier cheese mouldsNobody, to our knowledge, supplies cheese presses.

For rennet and annatto, you can choose from Clares Carltonor: R. J. Fullwood and Bland Limited,Ellesmere, Shropshire.or: Chr. Hansens Laboratory Limited,476 Basingstoke Road,Reading RG2 CQLHansens also supply cheese cultures and special cheesewax


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Fifteen years ago, if you had done a survey in this country,I doubt whether 10% of the population would have known whatyogurt was. All tlxxt has changed now. Big food manufact-urers recognised its potential as a bland, creamy textured,eminently suitable for flavouring with lots of differentsweetened fruit flavours and also having a health* image.Yogurt must have been one of the biggest food successstories since baked beans.Needless to say, the traditional product is rather differentfrom what we get from our supermarkets ---as you will knowif you have ever tried it in Greece or the Middle East.Traditional unboosted, unsweetened yogurt has been popularthroughout Northern and Central Europe and Western Asia,but is supposed to have originated in Bulgaria. There aremany local variants, from SKYB in Iceland, through DAIIIin India, TAETTE in Scandinavia, LEBEN in Egypt, toMAZTJN in Armenia,

Traditional yogurt is miik coagulated by the use of addedcultures into a soft curd (see the previous section on Whatis Cheese?). In hot countries, culturing is a way of pre-


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serving milk for slightly longer in a palatable form. In add-ition, it has had ascribed to it various therapeutic proper-ties, mainly, it appears, because of the unusual health andlongevity records of people in certain countries where it iseaten regularly.The cultures normally used are LACTOBACILLUS BULG-ARICUS and STREPTOCOCCUS THERlMOPHILUS, and thetraditional idea is that regular consumption of yogurt estab-lishes a colony of these micro-organisms in the intestinesand that they assist digestion. However, some recent re-search suggests that these particular organisms are not, infact, able to establish permanent colonies - they just helpthings along on their way. through. This means that you haveto keep eating yogurt regularly for it to be beneficial.There is more to come. New milk curdling cultures havebeen discovered which occur both in mothers milk and in thestools of infants. One is LACTOBACILLUS ACIDOPHILUS.This also occurs naturally in cows milk. This culture isknown to be particularly beneficial in that when establishedin the lower intestine, it produces conditions unfavourableto the growth of harmful putrefactive bacteria, It also aidsthe breakdown of food particles and the synthesis of vita-mins B and K.The trouble is that these friendly intestine dwellers arekilled off when you take penicillin and most other antibioticor sulphur drugs. So, if you do have to take these kinds ofdrugs, it might be an idea to follow them up with a few dosesof yogurt made with Acidophilus, Certain strains of Acid-ophilus have now been developed which are resistant to arange of antibiotics and which can be taken in powder formor made into yogurt. The stuff to buy is ENPAC, ma.de byAplin and Barrett Ltd. and available at chemists. Acidoph-ilus, though for use as a yogurt culture, will only reallywork on skim milk.Whether you use Acidophilus or the more usual cultures,


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the principles are the same. You add a small quantity ofculture, or milk from a previous batch containing culture,to milk, and then you incubate the cultured milk until theculture has thoroughly multiplied and coagulated the milk tothe desired consistency.

Any plain bought yogurt will work as a starter. Do not befooled by the labels in healthfood stores saying *LIVE yog-urt . All commercially sold yogurt, at least in the UnitedKingdom, is live.The are many variations possible on this basic method. Ifyou are using some shop bought yogurt as a starter, add itin at about one tablespoonful to the pint, mix it in well, andhold it for three to four hours at 70-105F. If you buy culturestick to the suppliers directions on time and temperature.DARI is based on buffalo! s milk, which is very rich; and alot of Middle Eastern yogurt is based on goat* s milk, whichmakes a very sharp, rather thin yogurt - very fine. But myalltime favourite is the YAORTI you get in Greece, madefrom ewes milk. It has a beautiful, light, yellow, creamycrust, and is firm and jelly-like. Served with a little clearhoney on top, it is out of this world.. . . . I dont know howthey get that crust on it - whether it is only possible withewes milk, or whether it is a special local culture, If everI go to Greece again, I will find out.If you or your children are hooked on supermarket yogurt,thats not difficult to copy either. Add dried skim milk ordried whole milk (whatever it says in the ingredients prin-ted on your favourite brand) to the milk you use. You willneed to experiment to get the right final consistency. Forflavouring, use a good full-fruit jam and mix it up well.This way you can make a modern yogurt for under half thesupermarket price,78


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Keeping a batch of cultured milk at around 80-90 I; for a fewhours needs a bit of care. The simplest method is to buy abig vacuum flask. FVarm it first. Heat the cultured milk ina saucepan to blood heat and put it in the flask. We leaveours overnight, but that is only out of laziness. it i.- lessacid if you cool it right down once the culture has formed acomplete curd, (usually three or four hours).If you like your yogurt jellv-like in individual pots, then em-bed the pots in a box of polystyrene beads (sold for makingsack chairs) or vermiculite roof insulation chips. Coverthe filled box with something equally insulating like polysty-rene sheeting, or a blanket. Do not let the polystyrene beadsget in the yogurt - they taste most peculiar, and camlot begood for you.We definitely do not think that the expensive electricallyheated automatic yogurt makers are really worth the ex-pense, especially when you can do the job so simply withoutthem.


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14 yet more dairy! to make at ho

SWEET PUDDINGSJUNKET is just milk set with rennet - the basis of cheese -eaten fresh. The rennet used is in the form of junket tabletsand can be bought from good grocers that way. Follow thedirections on the packet, but basically all you have to do isheat milk to around 90 degrees F, add the tablet and leaveit to set.The traditional English flavouring for junket was rum, butpowdered nutmeg or cinnamon on top also helps. Personally,I find junket a very dull dish compared to either yogurt orblancmange.BLANCMANGE. The addition of two and a .haJf tablespoonsof cornflour to a pint of milk, and then boiled and cooled toset turns the milk into a very acceptable pudding. It can beflavoured a hundred ways, but almond essence and chocolateare my favourites.The home production of ice cream is not as widely acceptedhere as it is in the USA, partly because our summers arenot as hot and partly because so few of us have yet discove-red the vast superiority of ice cream made in a special ice


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. . _. _ .._

crealr^ ;;laker, rather than in the ice tray of a fridge. Unlessit is stirred vigorously whilst freezing, ice cream sets un-evenly and forms nasty crystals. An ice cream maker isjust a double saucepan with a built-in stirrer. In the outerpan goes freezing brine, which you make by dissolving asmuch salt as the water will take, then freezing it in

the backyard dairy book

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