Last Wednesday I separated the kid from the doe as normal, ready for milking Thursday morning. But just before milking on Thursday morning, I was stung my a scorpion and unable to milk by myself and no-one else here can do it. I was quite worried about the milking as having separated the kid, I felt that the doe had to milked to get the milk out in order to prevent mastitis. A friend helped me do it, but she asked me would it be ok just to let the kid drink from the doe and would that empty the udder enough? Usually if I don't want to milk, I don't separate the kid, but what happens in unusual emergencies like this? Was I right that I needed to milk, or would it have been enough to let the kid drink? Thanks for your advice
Katharine
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As for her milk supply, the situation of holding off a kid, and then not being able to hand milk for that one time wouldn't hurt milk production, so from that angle, you would have been fine also. If you are faced with this situation again, and you wanted to make sure the kid was able to nurse without a lot of issues, you might try supervising the nursing while your dam is on the milk stand. Then you would be able to check udder hardness, etc. and watch to make sure the kid was able to latch on without too much head butting. (some head butting is normal, of course.)
Thanks Deborah, I'll know not to worry so much next time - although hopefully its not a scorpion next time!!
Having a situation like that once in a great while should not cause mastitis unless the doe was already on the verge of a problem to begin with. The only thing I'd worry about is if she was so full that her udder was hard, and then I'd at least want to get it softer. When it's really full and hard, it can sometimes be challenging for the kids to nurse, and they smack the udder with their head really hard, which is more likely to cause pain, bruising, and damage with a full udder.