I am milking two does and both of them take 'forever"-- about 45 minutes to milk both of them" dry". I get about a pint from each but when I go from one teat to the other and back, there's more milk, time after time. I s this normal or am I being too fastitious about getting all the milk from the udder? I've been told that leaving milkk in the udder can cause mastitus.
>
> Also I am having a lot of soreness in my hands, how kind, gentle, and effective are the milkers advertised on internet--there's one for $89 or it can be made from scratch--any advice anyone?
>
> Finally, both girls are hopper/kickers after they have finished their grain, so I fashioned some "hiney hobbles" that work well but they are still kicking after a month of using these--but I do have a clean bucket. Is this normal to take so long to settle into milking for first lactaters? Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>
> I'm keeping one of the kids and want to know if folks have found a good way to wean without a lot of crying (fussy neighbors !!!) Has anyone ever made/used a bra to keep the kids from nursing???
>
> With great gratitude,
>
> Barbara Rondine
You need to be a member of Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats to add comments!
Replies
The Henry Milker does a great job in a short amount of time and for some of my goats it's a life-saver. They really don't seem to mind it and it does both teats at once in about a minute flat. Then I milk them out by hand. I'm always done before they finish their grain. I do have one wonderful doe who is actually just as fast to milk by hand as the pump milker is -- she has nice big orifices and milk just pours out of her but she's my first goat like that. Now I understand how people can milk their goats out so fast. The size of the teats and orifices make all the difference. But my heaviest milker has small teats and tiny orifices and there's no way my hands can take hand milking her. So for her the Henry Milker is a life saver.
Once you get the hang of milking, it will take less than five minutes per goat. You are asking a LOT for a goat to stand still for 45 minutes! Even if you meant that it is 45 minutes total for two goats, that's still more than 20 minutes per goat, which is a long time for them to just hang out. You can mix their grain with alfalfa or grass hay pellets to keep them busy for longer while you're milking.
There are a lot of conversations in the archives about the various milkers, but the inexpensive ones do not consistently work well for everyone. I tried one of them on five of my goats, and it took more than twice as long as hand milking, AND it did not do a good job on every goat. It worked better on some than others. I had planned to use it on every goat, but I lost patience because it was just not fast enough for me. One of the problems is that it only does one teat at a time, which right there means that it will take 2X as long, even if it gets the milk out as fast as I could do it by hand, which it did not.
If you are only keeping one kid, it might not be practical to wean her because she will need a buddy when taken away from her mother. She will not be happy alone. You don't have to wean her. In fact, if you are not doing a good job of emptying the udder, then you should let the kids continue to nurse during the day so that they can keep up the milk supply while you perfect your technique. Otherwise, you'll wind up with less and less milk every day after you take the kid away. THAT is far more of a problem than mastitis, if you don't get the doe milked out. On our farm, we usually just separate kids from mom overnight starting at two months and milk them in the morning. We actually never wean doelings that we're keeping, so they grow big and strong and can usually be bred to kid as yearlings.
Rather than keeping the does on the milk stand for such a long time, creating an unpleasant experience for them, it might work better to just milk out as much as you can in 10 minutes then put them back with the kids so the kids can empty them. Like I said, once you've perfected your technique, it's less than 5 minutes per doe.
I have arthritis so milking by hand is not good - we converted a Babson surge milker and I love it. My goats don't mind it either. If you look on my website I showed the parts we ordered and the cost. Also it is quick to milk with. I keep some chaffhaye in my milking area and the fast eaters get some to keep them busy.
I never use hobbles - just quiet talk and praise but the milking machine is quick . My first timers are objecting a little to the evening milking but they want to keep it all for their babies I think. They are doing well - nursing and giving me a little also.
Pictures of the milker are on my site. Windingrvrfarm.com Good luck.