Isabel freshened for the second time 3 weeks ago. She has a beautiful, and very well attached udder, but it is small and so are her teats. She had not been milked before 3 days ago.
She comes from good milking lines, so I am hoping that in the next few years she will grow more. I have been putting her huge boys up at night for 12 hours, but even then she only gave me .5 lbs today. Previous days ended with the bucket spilled so I am not sure how its all going. At night she only has a few little squirts.
Her udder is so full in the morning that I can hardly get my fingers around her teats. Its about the size of a small grapefruit and the hardness of a racquetball. But I noticed today, if I just put gentle pressure (maybe the pressure one would use on a full pastry bag to write on a cake) on the udder one hand on the front and one on the back, the milk shoots out like a jet sprayer. Once she is not so full I can get my fingers around the teats to milk her properly.
Is there any reason I should not do this?
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That makes me feel better. She seemed to prefer that to me touching the teats until she got used to the idea that I was switching tactics. If they are this small at the start of the second lactation, I do not want to know what it was like before. WOW. The kids never have any trouble. It seems amazing to me that the kids she had last year would have been able to eat if her teats were even smaller then. When I wash her udder I have been using hot tap water ( it cools down some by the time I set up and get the goat)with a touch of anti-bacterial soap on a flour sack towel, drying with a bar mop towel and following the milking with some udder cream. Perhaps I could leave the warm towel on for a few more seconds and see if that helps.
Indiana's udder is great! Her rear attachments are not as good but her udder and teats are nicely sized for me, and when she's full she feels more like a beach ball. And I like that she lets me milk from either side since I am left handed, and otherwise end up squirting myself more than the bucket when I do the far side.
Teats definitely get longer during the course of the first lactation -- thank goodness! You have just discovered why breeders make a big deal of udders that feel "like butter." It is much easier to milk a doe whose udder stays soft, even when full.
I don't think there is any reason you shouldn't do what you described. Another thing that might help is a warm washcloth. If you start to see blood settle in the bottom of your milk as it sits in the frig, then you know you did something wrong. I've never had this happen with any of my NDs, but I bought a la mancha once that had this problem, and then I remembered that I'd seen the breeder's kids milking their goats at shows, and they were very rough. We never had a problem with that doe after that.