How to Milk a Goat

Suppose you decide that your children would benefit from drinking fresh, whole milk - but at least near my Indiana home, whole milk in the grocery store is close to $5.00 a gallon! So you decide to start milking your own goats. Here is how we started:

1. Choose a healthy goat that has given birth with a well-attached udder.
2. Assemble your supplies: a seamless stainless steel milking pail with a half-moon lid (www.thegoatstore.com), a milk strainer with filters, a strip cup, a milking stand, a way to clean the doe's udder and your hands before and after, a set of hobbles to keep your goat from kicking your milk pail over, and a way to feed your goat while she's being milked to help keep her happy.
3. When the kids are 2 weeks old, separate the kids from the doe at night. The kids will very quickly learn to fill up on milk right before you take the doe away at night, and do just fine without the doe for the night.
   
4. In the morning, get your goat on the milking stand and give her some feed to keep her happy, and to help her learn to look forward to milking time. If your goat isn't very tame, isn't used to being handled much, and hasn't been trained to lead, this will not be an easy task.
   
5. Hobble her back legs so she won't kick you or your milking pail. It really IS hard not to cry over spilt milk when you've worked so hard to milk your own!
6. Once your goat is situated, sanitize your hands, then get out your udder cleaning solution and use a wetted paper towel to carefully clean any bits of bedding or manure from her udder.
7. Milk out the first 3-4 streams of milk from each teat into a strip cup. This allows you to check for any strange textures or colors which could indicate your doe is experiencing infection, and also is supposed to remove any bacteria that may have been present in the first milk in the teat.
8. Put your milking pail under your goat. I always cover the half-moon opening of mine with saran wrap to help keep things like dust out of the milk in between goats and while I'm putting the doe on the milking stand, so you'll need to move aside the wrap before you start milking.
9. Milk your goat. At first you'll have some pretty good streams of milk coming into the pail, which take a while to get the hang of aiming right into the pail. Then after a while you'll notice the volume in the streams of milk slacking off - this is when you will want to start to gently "bump" the doe's udder to help her let down the milk. Then, when the streams of milk start to slack off again, massage the doe's udder, this will also help the milk come down. You'll know you've finished milking when the doe's udder feels soft and wrinkly, and not full and tight like it did before being milked. This takes (at least at first, until you're used to it) a very long time and your arms begin to feel as though they might fall off because you're not used to holding them up and outward for that length of time. Really it only takes 15-20 minutes per goat, but it sure can seem longer than that when you're arms are trembling!
10. When you've finished milking, replace the saran wrap over the pail, set it out of the way, treat her teats to help prevent infection, un-hobble your doe, and let her off of the milking stand.
11. Stand back and watch the mama doe and baby kids reunite, and admire how cute it is. The kids did fine overnight, and they're learning better how to eat hay than the other goat kids.
12. Feed the first milk you put in the strip cup to your trusty livestock guardian dog, who loves fresh milk and now won't expect anything less than fresh milk every time he sees you.
    
13. Bring the milk back to the house as quickly as you can, and pour it through the strainer into very clean wide-mouth quart jars. Refrigerate.

We like to allow the milk to chill overnight before we drink it, because we prefer ice cold milk. The cream in goat milk doesn't really rise to the top like cows' milk does, we just pour it out of the quart jar after a gentle swirl. I've been getting about 1.5-2 quarts of milk total from my two does each morning, but I'm still working on my aim - not all of the milk squirted at the pail actually makes it in! And my arms are still not quite capable of milking the does completely out, but I've been getting pretty close. I've been stopping at about 20 minutes per doe. We've had all the milk we needed for drinking, and I've made a batch of yogurt and some cultured buttermilk.

It takes an extra 15 minutes or so in the evenings to catch the does at night to separate them, feed them plenty of hay overnight, and make sure they have plenty of water. Then in the morning it takes about 5 minutes to assemble the clean milking pail, put the saran wrap on, and mix up the udder cleaning solution. Then another 5 to walk to the barn and get the first doe ready for milking. Then I spend 20 minutes with each doe, with roughly another 5 minutes in between does. After that I walk to the house, wash up, strain and refrigerate the milk, which is probably another 5 minutes. So 15 intense minutes of hard work at night to move the goats, plus an hour in the early morning (I frequently start the process at 4:45am to make it work with my family's schedule) makes for quite a bit of time spent on this whole process.

And that's not all! Mammals (goats included) don't give milk without first giving birth, and you'll have to secure the services of a buck (male goat) to get that process started. It takes about 5 months after breeding for a doe to kid. So you'll have to care for the doe while you wait for her to kid, which for us means twice daily feedings, making sure they have a clean, well-bedded area to live, making sure their feet are in good condition, that they stay in good health and weight, and in general practicing good animal husbandry so she'll have an optimal chance of having a problem-free birth, and having healthy kids. I've outlined how we chose to take care of the kids so we only have to milk the does once/day, but some choose to bottle raise the kids, which is even more time consuming, as they need to be bottle fed at least twice/day.

Now, even though it is a lot of hard work to milk my own goats, I'm glad I'm doing it. Some mornings, though, the $5.00/gallon price tag of grocery store whole milk looks pretty reasonable!

Goat Pictures

Well I said I'd try to get pictures, and here they are! Seems like all of our buck's offspring are forms of the two colors shown below. In fact, the kids look identical to me, it's amazing the mothers can tell who's who. It's so sweet to me to listen to the noises newborn animals and their mothers make to each other. Definitely softer than their usual hollering for food, or whatever they make noise for!

New Kids!

One of our goats kidded yesterday afternoon. We've been watching her for quite some time thinking it could be any time. My husband and I bundled up the kids and we all went out to do the afternoon chores as we usually do, and as I carried the bottle of milk for our bottle calf to him, I noticed all the goats came out of the barn except for the red-headed heavily-pregnant doe. Hmm!

As "Mini" the calf finished his bottle, Matt came to tell me that there were wet twins in the barn! So we all went to look, and sure enough, there was a cream colored kid and a black kid both wobbly on their feet, and the doe was still lying down, these were fresh! My daughter was just fascinated watching the momma and the fresh babies, she just quietly stood still and peered in. We left to give her a chance to clean them off herself after we penned out the rest of the goats so they'd leave her alone.

Hubby and the kids went to do the rest of the chores while I made supper, then we ate, put the kids in bed, then headed back out to check on our (goat) kids. The doe had cleaned them both off well, and they were both up and nosing around for their food source - it's amazing the instincts God has given animals - how do they know?! It was getting colder, but it was warm and still in the barn, but Matt went ahead and bedded them down with more straw, and we headed back to the house. It was getting late, and Matt had to be up early so he could be at his off-farm job at 5am.

We have one other doe who should be kidding soon. I may try to post pictures when she kids of the baby kids. Baby goats are about 5-9 pounds when they're born, about the same weight as a human baby! But much hairier! :-)

Hello friends, it's been awhile!

long time, no post....you know, summertime, we live on a farm - gets kind of busy! excuses, excuses, but here we go

Yesterday's sunrise was oddly beautiful. It doesn't break light these days until nearly 8am, and the sky went straight to bright blue between the spotted clouds - it looked almost like a giraffe's spots, only in feathery white and blue. The sky to the south was dark and promised rain, and it looked COLD.

It seemed a good idea to wake my nearly 3 year old daughter so she could have breakfast and we could do chores in time before it might rain. She and my nearly 1 year old son go along and we feed our goats, our livestock guardian dogs, my horse, and our little bottle calves. Our boy rides in the stroller, and our daughter's big enough now that she walks alongside and gets to help feed the goats and pour the feed to the dog.

My father-in-law was outside also, he starts his chores in the dark because he's not afraid of a little cold (my excuse is it's difficult to keep the kids warm, so we wait until the sun shines a bit!) and he told me it had been drizzling rain south of us, but it wasn't going to come as far north as us. Too bad...we could really use the rain! Our county and several counties around us are experiencing EXTREME drought.

This has been an unusual farming year, the lilacs bloomed in April this year instead of the first week of May like usual. And the pattern continued, it was warmer than usual almost every month - July like temperatures in June, July, and August, September was as hot as August, October more like September. With the heat and lack of rainfall, the crops were ready to run in September, and we were finished by the first week of October. This was a first for our farm to my knowledge - which meant we got a lot of warm fall days this year to catch up on other work.

If we would have just gotten significantly more rainfall, crop yields would have been great. Drought and high yields just don't go together, though. But it could have been much worse, while our yields were down significantly in corn, they were about the same in soybeans, and the prices are looking great, which really helps!

Already this year's calves have been weaned, the corn and beans are in the bin, we've moved that goats around, the silo is filled, a new field has been cleared for hay and planted, wheat has been planted.....surely I'm missing some things. I'll try to post more frequently to catch things as they happen, and maybe I'll post some short re-caps over the winter.

First Goat Babies of the Year!

Cookie the goat had her kids yesterday - twins - a doeling and a buckling. Very cute. The black/grey/white one is the buckling, the tan/white one is the doeling. They were just hours old in this picture.

I am so glad that she gets to raise some goat babies!

This goat was purchased with 8 other does in May 2007, at 4 months old. We ear tagged them, and this goat wound up as #7. She was very good at getting on the other side of fences. As a result of this, she ended up being bred earlier than we had anticipated, and kidded in early February of 2008 in very cold and windy temperatures - her kids that year were born dead.

Not wanting #7 to be a complete loss - I started milking her, and we froze the milk to save for other goat kids that might need it, and goat's milk makes some great ice cream!

At first, she resisted milking, because she was not tame, and didn't want anything to do with people. Eventually, she came to realize that it was a good deal to get to stand in the goat worker (like a milking stand) with feed to eat while I milked her and relieved pressure on her udder! She adopted me. She would lick me whenever she got the chance, BAAAA for me anytime I left the goat lot or the barn - calling for me, her "baby kid" to come back!

In March that year we adopted our first Livestock Guardian Dog, Brody. He was just over a year old and had a lot of puppy in him. Our goats were afraid of him, though he was very good with them. I hadn't realized the extent of #7's "claiming" of me until she went out of her way (as scared as she was of Brody) to put herself between me and Brody. If he got too close to me, she would stomp her front feet and snort at him, the way does do when their kids are in danger. She even went so far as to butt Brody away! This is when I started calling her Mommy Goat, and rightly so, as she had claimed me for sure as her kid!

Well, after the weather had warmed up enough for my daughter to come outside with us, I decided I had to change what I called this goat from Mommy Goat to something else - I didn't want my daughter to be confused! Since the goat is black in the front, white in the middle, and black in the back (she looks like an Oreo cookie) she's kept the name Cookie. It suits her.

So, Cookie now has kidded for her second time, and has live babies to raise and lick and feed. She still hasn't forgotten me though - as I was helping her kids find the udder, she alternated between licking her kids and licking me! I know she'll do a great job mothering those kids!

Pyrs, Pyrs, and More Pyrs!

Saturday brought 4 additional Great Pyrenees LGD's to our farm. Two working pairs: Max and Irma, and Clifford and Jack. All 4 Pyrs are being fostered for IGPR until they are adopted as working goat dogs, when they sadly lost their owner and goats due to a sudden heart attack.

This photo shows two of the dogs, Max and Irma, hanging out with Brody (our own LGD) and three of our goats. I had been a little concerned about how Brody would adjust to sharing his pasture and goats with other dogs, but HA, what a joke! He LOVES hanging out with Max and Irma!! Brody will be 2 in March.....and has a LOT of puppy left in him! He has been rough-housing a lot with his newfound playmates and loving every minute of it.

Clifford (a female!) and Jack are friendly, and are living with 4 does and our two horses. They seemed to adjust very well so far, just a matter of getting used to what is normal around here. Here is a picture of Clifford trotting around checking out her new digs, with the goats intently checking HER out!

All seem to be settling in very well.

Have you ever had the pleasure of having three GIGANTIC white dogs very politely standing in front of you, peering up with their beautiful dark eyes, pleading with you to please pet them? Just a gentle lean, not so much as to knock you off balance, but enough that you know they appreciate you. What gentle giants these dogs are!

More cold, More dogs?!?

So last night Matt made sure to do the chores before dark so it'd be a tiny bit warmer. He came back and said we might want to move Cookie (my favorite goat.....the only "named" goat....I'll probably post on her more later after she has her kids!) since her udder looked significantly bigger than it had looked.

We've had the goats since May 2007, and Cookie kidded once when the temperatures were so cold we think that the kids froze by the time we found them in the morning. Since then we've put the goats in the old farrowing house ('FH' - leftover from when they had pigs) that is kept above freezing for storing chemicals in the winter. We thought Cookie and #8 would kid before mid-December, so we had them both in the FH for a while, and only #8 kidded. So after the kid was 2 weeks old and we decided if Cookie hadn't kidded by then, she wasn't going to kid until mid-March, we put them back outside. Well, she's had lots of udder and vulva changes, and I know anything born outside in this weather basically had a death sentence, so to be safe we put her inside the FH last night. She seemed very happy to go! She knew it was warm in there! I don't know how she would kid now...the buck was removed, unless it was one of the older little buck kids that bred her. I'm glad she's safe now.

Also, I got a call from the people at www.igpr.org where we got our LGD from, needing someone to foster up to 7 dogs! We agreed to foster 2 working groups out of the three, so we'll be having lots of big whites running around here by the weekend! The goats should be VERY safe!! Hope Brody gets along with them.

Single Digit Temperatures!

It was less than 5 degrees at chore time this morning, so needless to say I hurried!

The goats and horses were shivering quite a bit, but Brody the LGD was fine! He had a few drops of ice on his fur where he'd drooled, but the cold didn't phase him!

I fed a little extra hay, and had to de-ice one bucket. It is nice having an automatic waterer that is made not to freeze!

Introduction

It's high time I begun this blog, and started writing posts for it. After all, it is a big part of why I began blogging in the first place!

At the 2008 Indiana Farm Bureau Young Farmer conference last January, one of the speakers talked about how farmers can best stand up for their right to farm the land, raise livestock, and feed America. These rights are being challenged more and more by a variety of groups, and agriculture is at risk.

One of the ways was to get into the "blogosphere" by posting comments and blogging about the things we do on our farms and getting onto the animal rights and environmentalists blogs and leaving challenging (yet polite) comments to try to educate others about what we really do and why it is the right thing to do.

So, this is my hope for this blog:

• Talk about our farm operation and why we do the things the way we do them


• Explain why it's morally acceptable to eat meat and raise livestock


• Share information that may help others who also farm or who are interested in learning more about it

Specific things we raise that may be discussed on this web log:

• Charolais/Angus Beef - We have a 60 cow/calf operation, and finish the calves born as well as buying and finishing feeder calves




• Meat Goats - We have a small herd of boer cross meat goats, with about 10 mature does.




• Livestock Guardian Dogs - To protect our investment in the goats, we have a Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog. LGD's are bred to protect small livestock from predators (coyotes, birds of prey, etc.)




• Rotational/Management Intensive Grazing - A good way to increase pastureland productivity




• Corn




• Soybeans




• Hay - Both for sale off the farm and to feed our animals




• Wheat/Straw - Most of this is raised to bed down our animals




• Corn Silage - Chopped by our neighbor, used to feed our cattle and goats in the winter months




• Vegetable Garden - My family's personal garden, we grow sweet corn, potatoes, onions, green beans, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, radishes, garlic....and are always interested in trying new things. Most of this produce is stored for our family's use by freezing and home-canning. We also eat a lot of it as it's picked!