In addition to a control diet, lactating cows were offered saturated fatty acid mixtures in three forms, free acids, free triglycerides and protected triglycerides, i.e. triglyceride encapsulated within a protein matrix which was cross linked by exposure to formaldehyde. Relative to the control diet, all three supplements increased milk yield. However, only the free fatty acids gave rise to increased yields of the three major milk components. The free fat and the protected fat caused significant increases only in the lactose yield. The different effects of the supplements on the yield of milk fat are suggested to be due to the types of long chain acid reaching the mammary gland rather than to any change in rumen activity. Changes in the concentrations of the soluble multivalent ionic constituents of the milks were consistent with this conclusion.

SummaryDietary manipulation was used to produce a similar series of milks from both Friesian and Jersey cows. The gross compositions of the milks, the fatty acid (FA) composition of the milk fats, the distribution of molecular sizes in the triglycerides of the milk fat, the melting properties of the milk fats, and the whipping properties of creams containing 360 and 400 g fat/kg were measured. Changes in gross composition and FA composition were as expected from the use of dietary oil supplements, but it was established that the mathematical relation between 18:0 and 18:1 differed between breeds, the Jersey yielding a milk fat with a lower proportion of 18:1 for a given value of 18:0. Control diets free from added fat produced milk fats with essentially unimodal triglyceride distributions, whereas fatrich diets produced bimodal distributions. The slight differences in these distributions between breeds were merely a reflection of variations in FA composition rather than in synthetic procedures. Differences in the whipping properties of creams containing 360 and 400 g fat/kg were consistent with literature observations. Dietary manipulation had little effect on the whipping properties of creams derived from Friesian cows, but caused considerable changes in the corresponding properties of the creams from Jersey cows. The only property that behaved similarly in the creams from the two breeds was the butter time, i.e. the time taken for butter granules to form on prolonged whipping of the cream. A major determinant of the butter time appeared to be the proportion of the fat that was molten at the temperature at which the whipping experiments were carried out.

Standard methods of fractionating milk fat from the melt produce solid fractions that exhibit melting at temperatures considerably lower than that used for the fractionation. The use of high concentrations of aqueous detergent, in the presence of ammonia as an aid to centrifugation, has resulted in this solid material being sub-fractionated into a semi-solid, plastic material and a crystalline solid. The technique may be applied directly to milk fat to produce three fractions at a given fractionation temperature. Fatty acid compositions and separations according to triglyceride number are recorded for the parent fats and their fractions. Melting fingerprints, obtained by differential scanning calorimetry, are shown for the various samples, and the heats of melting are discussed.

SummaryFree and protected soya oil and soya oil fatty acids were included in the rations of dairy cows and from outputs in the milk of 18:1 trans and of polyunsaturated acids conditions in the rumen have been deduced. Similarly, the content of citrate in the milk has been used to evaluate changes occurring in the synthesis of fatty acids in the mammary gland.

The influence of diet on the efficiency of conversion of milk solids to cheese in two breeds of cow, viz. Jersey and Friesian, was examined. An increase in the efficiency of conversion of milk solids to cheese in Jersey milks produced from cows on winter diets as compared with a typical summer diet was shown to be associated with an improvement in the level of fat retention in curd. The difference in fat retention could to some extent be related to the overall fat content of the milk, the casein to fat ratio and the distribution in the size of the fat globules but these factors when considered collectively or independently could not adequately explain the differences in fat retention observed in these experiments. The level of fat retention in curd was not influenced by the thermal properties of the mik fat.