Milking Supplies?
 

I have 2 pregnant goats and one that will hopefully be pregnant soon. I need to get some milking supplies, but am on a bit of a budget. What do you recommend?

Hoegger has a small milking kit for $68. Includes stainless milking pail, mini strainer and filter. Caprine Supply has a Basic Milking Kit for 3 or more goats for $108. Includes bucket, strainer, filters, strip cup and Fight Bac spray.

Any others that are better economically? What would you use? I am new to milking so I want to be sure I have what I need.

Thanks :)

I have 4 of the smallest stainless steel buckets from Jeffers Pet. At 3.99 a peice I think that a great price. Use 1 for washing up the bag and the other for milking. Love those buckets! They even serve as wash buckets when I cow sit.

I have a small stainless strainer from one of the goat supply places. On another thread some suggested using one of those metal mesh coffee filters for filtering the milk. I am going to try that as that would be a huge savings.

So you just milk into buckets and strain into jars, right? That was my game plan anyhow. lol

I use stainless steel buckets in a variety of sizes. Sometimes TSC has affordable ones!! There's really no need to pay for the high dollar ones.
http://www.tractorsupply.com/en/stor...dard-pail-9-qt

Don't use the strip cup, although I have one. Squirt the first few streams onto a paper towel or into a bowl for the cat. You'll be able to see (and feel) any clumps, clots, anomalies.

I have used both the minifilter and the metal coffee filter. I like the metal coffee filter better, but I'm sure it lets a bit more dust through.

For paper towels I buy Sparkle brand for the milk house. I used to use Bounty, but they are now too expensive, and Sparkle works fine.

For spray, I use diluted chlorhexadine in a small spray bottle. TSC has it.

Yep thats what I do.

Now that sounds good! I haven't seen the buckets at Tractor Supply, but maybe I am not looking in the right place. I will look for the disinfectant as well. And a coffee filter is easy. :) Yay! :)

The buckets are often in the dog supplies area.

I don't trust loosing the milk in a toppled over bucket...so we use mason jars.
I milk into a qt jar and then dump into a 1/2 as necessary.
We use the metal coffee filter in a canning funnel and put that on a "clean"
jar back in the house and voila :)

That's actually kind of funny. I was thinking about milking right into a jar but then had visions of a goats kicking the jar over and breaking it. Seems like a bucket would be less likely to get kicked over.

These girls will be first fresheners. Not the ideal goats to start milking with. Today we are picking up a portable milking stand that we got a wonderful deal on. My brilliant plan is to get them used to getting on the stand every day until they give birth. Hopefully the will get the hang of it.

Of course, there is a monkey wrench that has to be included (because of course it does). One of the girls we have only had for a couple of weeks, and while she will eat out of my hand, she will not let me touch her.

Getting her on the milking stand should be quite the challenge. Good thing she is a Nigerian and not a bigger breed. I've never had a goat behave this way, so it is odd to me.

I milk with one hand and hold the jar in another :)
I HAVE had it kicked out of my hand before!! But it doesn't
happen often, I'm pretty quick on the draw

Practice, practice practice with your other doe. Soon she'll
learn there are treats there and won't take long to comply ;)

I pretty much do what Alice does including the buckets from TSC and the chlorhexidine. One difference is I strain with a tight woven muslin, like a hgh quality cheesecloth doubled over. My biggest expense will be the cmt (california mastitis test).

That is my hope, Suzy. :) She at least comes to me now and will nibble my fingers to see if I have goodies. It's just so odd because my other goats come running for pets and kisses and she just stands off to the side eyeing me suspiciously.

I am not even positive she is pregnant because I can't feel her, but she appears to be developing long teats so I am thinking an udder will follow. And that tells me I have only weeks to get her used to me and the whole routine.

My guess is I will have to hobble both girls until they get used to everything. Molly loves attention (my Alpine) but if I touch her teats or feel how her udder is coming along, she about jumps out of her skin. lol

I seem to have a knack for doing things the hard way, but I do love my goats. Even the difficult ones. :)

Not necessarily (the hobbling).
If you are able to be there when she kids, have
her lick a little bit of goo off of you, like off your hand.
I've noticed with a few stand-offish does of ours
they mellow out a lot on the stand once
they've had their kids (I just can't
run out of treats ;))

With those little buckets I mentioned above I can hold with one hand and milk with the other.

The last 3 milking goats I have had have ALL come to me as kickers. I hobbled and then the hobble is fastened to the end of the stanchion that way both feet don't go flying up and into my bucket.

1. Paper towels to wash/dry/test for clean teats
2. Hot water to wash
3. Dog/cat bowl for first and last milk
4. Heavy glass batter bowl with lid (Anchor makes 1 and 2-quart sizes)
5. 6.5" milk filters (non-gauze)
6. Wide-mouth quart canning jar

No strainer/funnel is necessary --I fold the filter into a cone and hold it over the jar as I pour. After straining, I use the filter to wash eggs and they can be reused around transplants. I can get my hand in a wide-mouth jar to clean it good. The whole process is simple, fast, and enjoyable.

I milk once a day by hand right before sundown or early evening depending on the time of year and I've been doing this for several years. My does raise their kids before they contribute to our diet for a few months. I've been successful at staggering breeding up to 6 months apart. I milk in a non-windy outbuilding "room" that is heated in winter and there is no issue of flies in the summer.

I'm spoiled over my girls' fresh milk :spinsmiley:.

Happy MILKING!!!

If you can't get the touchy one on the stand by the time she kids, but you can catch her (assuming you are working slowly with her every day), then tie her to the fence and milk her where ever you can. :)

Sometimes does are touchy about their udders when they are pregnant. And almost NONE of my goats likes it when I try to touch their udder in the pen--according to them, that is only allowed on the milkstand! ;)

I though a seasoned cow milker am new to goat milking . I looked on u tube and ebay at and also read the homesteaders guide to small livestock . my doe is a first freshener as well . I built a milk stand with a stanchtion on the end with a feed bowl .and really like it not having to bend over so far or kneel .after a couple of days now she is getting up on the stand without any bribeing or leading from me and as she starts eating fronm her bowl I close the head gate on her . I found my big 3 gallon cow bucket barely fit under her so I got a smaller one a TSC from the dog section . I found on ebay for about 69. $ a milker that you hook up to a wide mouth mason jar and pump out the air by hand like a reverse spray bottle so far its working fine no bucket for her to step in cause I squeezed to hard I have equipped this milker with a 1/2 gallon jar now so I don't have to change jars mid milking . leaveing me to just have to get a few squirts at the start and to strip her out at the end . I have an old strainer with a brass screen that iv had for years so I suppose the metal coffee filter one would work just as well as far as chemical sprays bleach or iodine I never used them on my cow or new goat just warm water and a bit of dish soap .I had learned years ago with the cow to feed her in the milk stall so she would willingly rush right into the barn and into place at first the cow having been broke to be tied (but not lead) I would then just snap the chain on to her halter to keep her in place till I finished milking but after a while she became used to me and the routine and tieing was unnessasary . so you are doing the right thing now by feeding your does on the milkstand you may have to bribe them to get in a couple of times but after that you will have to get out of the way as they jump up .

Looks great!

Now THAT is very cool. :) I have never seen a milker like that.

Does that hand vacuum pump have any pulsation or is it constant vacuum. Isn't constant vacuum bad for their teats?

We have a similar milker - the maggiedans. http://www.maggidans.com/milker.htm
It does the job, it's just simple stuff you can get from the hardware store...
if we needed another, I'd make it myself :)
Hubby has trouble with small teats so if he "needs" to milk for some reason
we have it available.
We did notice that it left pressure marks and even made some of our does
bleed from the very top of the cup, it needs some padding around the plastic
edges I think and perhaps they were dry also (it was in winter)...
but we don't use it often enough to give a FULL review - it's just too much work.
I much prefer to milk by hand when it's just a few goats in milk.

Suzy, how do you dilute the chlorhexadine? Is that what you use to wash before milking?

I just use diluted blue dawn to wash before - it works :)
Just a few drops in the spray bottle and water... spray on, towel
off (or I used to bring a bucket and a wash cloth w/ water and
a few drops of blue dawn- that works well when it's muddy out
and they may be dirtier than usual).
Paper towel off, fold to a clean side or the paper towel and I squirt
my first few on there so I can see it and make sure all looks well, then
I toss it or wash it if it's a rag :)

I think Alice wrote up top that she uses the chlorexadine diluted in a spray
bottle.

There are directions on the bottle, but I fill a spray bottle with water and put a schlurp of Chlorhexadine in it.

A schlurp is part of the official measurement system of Capridonia. A schlurp is less than a glug.:spinsmiley:

I just use a shlurp of Clorox in the wash bucket with a touch of dish soap. Its has to be name brand bleach, the other stuff really bothers me.

I bought a pack of those white rags from Costco. Some I cut in half and those are my wash rags. The whole rags I use for drying the bag.

it has a constant vacume that you control ,with the parts being clear you can see the milk start flowing and can keep it at that pressure i'm thinking that if you were to try to hurry up the milking and add more vacuum it may do daage.it has worked well for me so far . there are no sharp edges to scratch or cut the teat (?) .with the small amounts of parts clean up is simple .:goodjob:

What if you are milking to feed bums? Do you still so the whole process of filtering and cleaning udder etc? I'm guessing so but never thought much about it I guess. I'm new to goat milking. We had a dairy farm when I was a kid but that was milk for human consumption so a little diff. This will be strictly for critters. No one in my house will drink it

cleaning the udder is as much for the benefit of the goat or cow as for the drinker of the milk . as will keepevery thing else clean filtering out any dirt of stray hair that gets in the bucket sure can't hurt the bummers and will make cleaning your bottles easyer you can also watch for lumps in the milk at this step as a warning sign of mastititice .

Thanks. That's what I thought. Since the kids will be left with her, do I dip her teats with the iodine stuff (we did with our cows but they were dairy cows and the calves weren't on them)

we never did when we used a nurse cow the iodine may do more harm than good when feeding awe natural . mother nature seems to do a good job on her own :-)

Thank you. I truly appreciate that you use the technical terms so I can be as accurate as possible in my measurements. :hysterical:

I use a schlurp of ACV in a gallon of water.
I also milk into mason jars, then up to the house, strain into another mason jar through good quality cheesecloth (I make a small well in the cheesecloth and use the jar lid or rubber band to hold it on the jar), changing cheesecloth squares with every jar filtered.
Then it's into the freezer for 90 minutes then into the coldest part of the fridge.

When I am just milking for kids or other animals, I still wash udders, but I don't bother with filtering or chillling quickly or anything. I just keep a 5 gallon bucket handy and pour into that and then put in fridge in my barn. I do teat dip regardless of whether kids are on or not, as I don't know if the kids are going to nurse right away and I have also had does that I would let the kids out (after locking up at night and letting out during the day), and she would get annoyed by their pestering and lay down...wouldn't want an open orifice laying down like that in the dirt before getting nursed. Teat dipping just takes a second, so I figure it's worth it just in case.

I use an 8qt stainless steel stock pot. Never saw the need for an expensive bucket. I think I paid like 6.00 at the dollar store for it. I zip tied some split rings onto the handles and use a double ended dog leash thing (I think it's called a coupler) for a handle, and I remove it after use. We had the coupler laying around, you could make one out of rope and spring snaps. I have a 12 qt and another 8 qt that I use as a double broiler for pasteurizing.

For heat treating colostrum I use a multi-cooker I bought for 20.00 from Wal-Mart years ago... I long ago figured out where the dial needs to be for 130*, and marked it. Now I just set it up when a doe is in labor and can immediately heat treat colostrum and it's set to the right temperature and will hold it for as long as it's plugged in. Works great for me. I put the colostrum in pint jars and submerge them in water in the multi cooker and put a thermometer right inside of one to measure the temp.

I use plastic little 1 gal buckets for udder wash that are cheap at Menards ( I use water, a bit of dawn dish soap, and a splash of bleach - I think udder wash pre milking and post dipping are some of the simplest steps for udder health and milk quality). We post dip with that or chlorhexidine spray that is cheap do dilute out and keep in a spray bottle. To pre-wash, I dampen a paper towel and wipe down the teats and base of udder pre-milking, brush the belly with a hand to remove any clinging straw, and milk.

I do have the mini filter and filter pads. I strain into a gallon size glass jar we have, and then into the pasteurizer stock pot; you can strain right into the jars if you're doing raw. :)

PRACTICE with your does before they freshen. See the training to the milkstand thread. :)