Daily Kennebec Journal

Daily Kennebec Journal.

GOATS WHO CHURN.

The most striking feature of the dairy ranch of F. S. Clough, in San Mateo canon, is the new dairy house which Mr. Clough recently completed at a cost of $1500. It is 18 by 36 in ground dimensions, finished externally in rustic style, and inside is as trim and cleanly as the thrifty housewife's "best room." The butter room, an apartment 10 by 15 feet in dimensions, is as inviting as a parlor. The apparatus for handling the milk and making the butter is complete in every detail, and is designed throughout for the saving of labor. The churn holds fifty-two gallons of cream, and turns out from one hundred to one hundred and twenty pounds of butter at each churning. It is worked by goat power, the appliances being a treading-wheel eighteen feet in diameter, which connects with and operates a shaft running into the dairy-house, and this in turn connecting with cog-wheels working the dashers. Mr. Clough says that the goats in operating the wheel indulge their natural propensities for climbing, and they apply themselves to the work with great gusto. The herd consists of some eight or ten animals, ranging from the grandmother and old "Billy" with the whiskers down to the youngling not over a foot high. When released from their pens they one and all, great and small, run bleating for the wheel, and the only trouble to contend with thereafter is the excess of power which they are apt to give it in the course of their frolicsome gambols.-Los Angeles Express.