It totally depends on how much the goat is producing when you decide to stop milking. If she is at the peak of production, the odds of mastitis are much greater than if she's down to producing only a cup per milking. If she is only producing a cup per day, the udder never fills up when you stop milking. I've never heard of an udder exploding unless a goat got gangrenous mastitis, in which case the goat often dies.
Don't worry about the grain. It's not as big of a deal as some people make it sound like. It's all about supply and demand. If the udder fills up, the body gets the message to stop producing milk.
Usually once a goat is down to a cup per milking, we drop down to one milking per day. Within about a week, that one milking is only producing about a cup a day, and at that point, you just stop milking completely. If you don't have anyone producing that little, I'd suggest drying off the ones that have the lowest production. Go down to once a day, and you'll probably see their production decrease. After a week or two, you can stop. Do NOT start doing every other day or every third day. If they are still producing a lot, the udder has to get "full" for the body to get the signal to stop producing, so if you go to every 2-3 days, the body just gets confused and keeps producing. A holistic dairy vet in Wisconsin said that most cow dairies will milk the cow one last time a week after they stopped milking, but that's it.
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It totally depends on how much the goat is producing when you decide to stop milking. If she is at the peak of production, the odds of mastitis are much greater than if she's down to producing only a cup per milking. If she is only producing a cup per day, the udder never fills up when you stop milking. I've never heard of an udder exploding unless a goat got gangrenous mastitis, in which case the goat often dies.
Don't worry about the grain. It's not as big of a deal as some people make it sound like. It's all about supply and demand. If the udder fills up, the body gets the message to stop producing milk.
Biggest question - in order to milk I need grain on stand, but to dry off I want to decrease grain- right?! How do you all balance that? Judy
Usually once a goat is down to a cup per milking, we drop down to one milking per day. Within about a week, that one milking is only producing about a cup a day, and at that point, you just stop milking completely. If you don't have anyone producing that little, I'd suggest drying off the ones that have the lowest production. Go down to once a day, and you'll probably see their production decrease. After a week or two, you can stop. Do NOT start doing every other day or every third day. If they are still producing a lot, the udder has to get "full" for the body to get the signal to stop producing, so if you go to every 2-3 days, the body just gets confused and keeps producing. A holistic dairy vet in Wisconsin said that most cow dairies will milk the cow one last time a week after they stopped milking, but that's it.