Milking
a Goat? |
So you
are new to goats? And you decided to have
meat goat and not to have dairy goats cause
you don't want to have to milk goats? You
have never milked a goat? Never wanted to
milk anything? Never considered milking a
goat? Didn't know milking was an option?
|
We were like that, never considered
milking a goat, after all we had meat goats,
not dairy goats. Well Alma was a Nubian, but
the guy we bought her from used her to get
percentage boers.
|
That was the way we were thinking.
Why would we ever need to milk? Then Bertha
had triples, and developed a case of mastitis... |
When we had to hospitalize Bertha at the Animal
Clinic in Pulaski with a mild case of mastitis,
we determined we had another major problem:
hungry triplets. At least we thought they
should be hungry
|
The first step was to get milk. Not a problem.
We had a Nubian, Alma, who had given birth
the same day as Bertha; and Alma had plenty
milk for her single kid and the triplets.
(At this time it never occurred to us that
Bertha might come home from the Animal Clinic
and reject her kids because she sensed another
goat's milk on/in them.)
|
We had both milked cows before; could goats
be that much different? (And while we had
both milked cows, I probably should add here
it had been well over 40 years since either
of us had considered milking anything!) But
we were confident; we could do this.
|
While I held Alma's head to keep her from
running away, Ken got into position to milk.
The first thing we noticed was goat teats
are considerably smaller than Jerseys'. And
almost immediately we realized that while
Alma was a "milk goat" she had probably
never been milked in her life. Great –
an inexperienced goat! After about 30 minutes
we managed to get enough milk to fill one
8 oz. baby bottle.
|
Little did we know, milking was the easy part.
Seems the three babies had grown accustomed,
in one short day, to their mother's milk and
really didn't want to have anything to do
with the bottle or Alma's milk. With great
effort on our part, we finally managed to
squirt about an ounce of milk in each of the
bucklings' mouths and got about two ounces
into the tiny doeling. The remaining four
ounces was either on the ground or on us.
|
Unfortunately, this procedure – milk
Alma, fill bottle, plead with babies to drink
– had to be repeated several times.
Fortunately, Bertha was only in the Animal
Clinic overnight, and apparently we hadn't
gotten enough milk in the babies for Bertha
to reject them.
|
But our milking days weren't over. Bertha
had to be "milked out" twice a day
for a week – until the signs of mastitis
were gone. And if we thought Alma, a milk
goat, was hard to milk, Bertha was a nightmare!
We tied her to the barn, and one of us would
have to hold her leg while the other tried
to milk her. She was not a happy goat. Finally
we called on the experts: Bertie and Paul
Hillhouse came to the rescue.
|
Milking a Fullblood Boer
|
The first thing Bertie did was squeeze some
milk on both hands. According to Bertie, a
goat (or cow) will "let the milk down"
if the milker has wet hands. We had been very
gently tugging at the ends of the teats with
our fingers; Bertie grabbed the entire teat
with her whole hand and squeezed while pulling
down. Instead of the few droplets we had been
getting, suddenly there was a stream of milk.
|
Lessons learned: have wet hands, and don't
worry about hurting the goat. (You should,
though, be concerned about the goat hurting
you. Until they become accustomed to being
milked, they tend to want to walk all over
you. Kicking is not unheard of.) Another lesson
learned: try not have have any bottle babies!
|
It didn't take us long to also learn milking
is hard on the back of the milker. We had
a little milk stool our daughter-in-law
had sent from Germany, possibly as a joke.
That helped. But since our goats really didn't
like the idea of being milked, that tended
to attempt to wander off – or at least
get away from us and our stool.
|
|
If you liked
this article please let us know by signing
our guestbook. |
