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Show By Robert S. Murdock County Agricultural Agent WHY FAT TESTS VARY One of the questions most j asked of me since coming to Duchesne Du-chesne County has been: "Why the fat test on their milk varies : so much from one month to an- j other?" I cannot say for sure why, in each particular case the fat percentage may vary,! but on a general basis there' are 13 factors that may affect! the fat content. About half the j cows in our area vary between .1 and .2 during their lacta-, tion, with a few as low as .05 i and others as high as .6.', Among the thirteen causes of j variation in per cent fat, wSj find seasons of the year to be the most important. One study shows a group of Holstein cows to test as low as 3.22 fat in the summer, average aver-age 3.36 in the fall, raise to a high of 3.54 in the winter and decline to an average of about 3.44 in the spring. This data should help explain why tests decrease during the spring and summer months. , Other factors are (2) temperature, temper-ature, with milk test higher in the coldest weather; (3) stage' of lactation with the test vary- ing in the opposite direction to1 volume of milk produced; (4) breed and individuality, there ,is an individual variation with a breed as well as breed deferences. de-ferences. The fat content of the milk of a particular cow will j follow the pattern of that cow. I (5) Age of cow, the per cent of j fat seems to decrease as cows advance in age; (6) completeness complete-ness of milking, since the lasti milk dram is as high as seven times the first stream in p?r cent of fat; (7) diseased udder i or cows having mastitis have a lower percentage of fat than the same cows had when udders were healthy; (8) differences in milking intervals. Long intervals between milk-ings milk-ings give lower fat percentages than shorter intervals; (9) exercising ex-ercising cows seems to increase the fat percentage, this may be a result of the production of less milk and is not recommended; recommend-ed; (10) percent of fat can be increased by feeding certain fats and oils, however, the increased in-creased butterfat is not great enough to offset increased cost of production; (11) when in high flesh condition, cows produce milk with a higher per cent of fat than when they are thin; (12) Thyroxin injection, or feeding iodinated casein, increases the per cent of fat in the milk of cows with lazy thyroid glands; (13) and excitement lowers the i fat percentage. As I mentioned at the start, I cannot say why your test is down, but maybe from the above you can draw your own conclusions, which undoubtably will be the reasons for your lowered fat content. I.F.Y.E. What does that mean? It seems as if we use initials for about everything, and I believe a good share of the time few know just what they do mean; however, in this case, I shall be glad to explain what the initials stand for. I.F.Y.E. means International Farm Youth Exchange. Ex-change. That helped a lot of you, I am sure. Many of you. last winter heard one of our Utah boys .give a talk, who had been our exchange student to Syria. The International Farm Youth Exchange is a program that has been developed among various countries throughout the world, where young men and women will be 'exchanged' or sent to other countries to live with its farm people for approximately 9 months, where he or she can work right on the farm sleeping and eating with variotis farm families. In this way they get a chance to learn that country's coun-try's customs and ways, and in turn can let them know the true American way. So many of our I.F.Y.E.'s report on returning home that the countries abroad know so little about America, only that it is a land of plenty and where Cowboys and Indians are always at war. I don't feel that it is necessary neces-sary to point out to you that a program such as this is one of the best ways to bring our countries together in a morei common understanding. We all know war will not accomplish this purpose. From all indications indica-tions it does look like this program pro-gram can, and has helped. Now, I would like to ask, would there be any farm fam- ily in Duchesne County that j would like a young lady from i Finland or Germany to' share I our farm with you for two or three weeks. If so would you please drop me or Miss Reich-ert Reich-ert a line, or come in and see us. |