Cow or Goat Milk??

Goat milk has its own taste, depending on what breed of goat gave it to you. (Also, you can make butter out of goat milk, just not as easily as you can from cow milk.) The goat milk you purchase in stores is yukky and does not even begin to compare with fresh milk from your own goat!

Goat milk is also healthier in that it leaves an "alkaline ash" in your system; whereas, cow milk leaves an "acidic ash". Research this and you discover it is acidic ash that contributes to cancer. Also, we discovered the alkaline ash helps greatly in reducing bad cholestral.

Our herd runs together, i.e. buck with does the majority of the year, even during their lactation months, which averages out to be 10 months out of every year. We have had some does give over a gallon of milk a day throughout this time and a few who did not need to be bred to continue providing us with high quality and good tasting milk throughout a 2nd year. Our milk NEVER has what one might call a "buck" taste to her milk; neither do our bucks have an odor, except when they are in rut and this is kept to a minimum by a simple washing periodically during that time.

As for how long fresh goat milk keeps: We strain it and place it in the cold refrig immediately after milking. If we have more than we can use up within a week, I freeze it. Goat milk is just as good after it is thawed!

Hope this information helps.

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If goats milk is handled correctly there isnt much difference in taste, but handled carelessly it can taste pretty strong. I like the idea of milking goats. They dont need as much room, and dont need as much feed.

Growing up on a cow dairy farm, Im very partial to cows, but they give too much milk for one family, and they eat so much.

If you can get a sample of goats milk to see if you like it, and if you do like it, I reccomend buying a goat or two.

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Also, cows have sloppy nasty poo. Goats drop little 'berries.' HUGE difference in the cleanliness factor.

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

Nothing better than fresh milk from a well-fed, well-cared for animal--cow or goat(I prefer Jersey, Gurnsey, Milking Shorthorn cow, myself). Let that animal get dirty, give her poor feed, let her get scared or angry on the way to milking, put her in a computerized production system, or let her get into the wild garlic...............blech......

geo

lol....was more than once our goats got into wild onions....onion flavored milk is not palatable.

I've had both, and goats don't seem to attract the flies like cows do and they cheaper to feed and easier to manage than the cows.

My little Nigerians give about a 1/2 gallon a day of very rich milk (butterfat runs 6-10%) and we have no problem making butter by just shaking a half quart of room temperature whole milk for about 20 minutes. They are fed only alfalfa pellets - everything else is forage from the pasture unless it is freezing and then they get grass hay. But in my area that means I feed out less than a dozen bales of hay in a year.

For someone without a lot of land, or a huge family I think they are about the perfect homestead dairy producer. They don't take up much space, come into season year round so that you can stagger breedings to keep a good milk supply. The higher butterfat also means more cheese per gallon, as well as the ease in making butter. They also are prone to having multiple kids which gives you more to sell, keep or eat.

Mine get along just fine with my pastured chickens and they happily share pasture space with some goats even seeming to have a pet hen that they can be found napping with.

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Wags Ranch Nigerians


"The Constitution says to promote the general welfare, not to provide welfare!" ~ Lt. Col Allen West

Our cow and our goats eat the same thing and the milk tastes pretty much the same. Hard to separate goat's milk for cream without an expensive piece of machinery, so we have both for different reasons. Butter etc from the cows milk, plus one cow can feed several kid goats and we can sell the goat's milk for more than cows milk. Can't raise a steer from a goat either, ha ha.

I vote goat, origionally planned on a milk cow but after alot of research, looking at stock and sampling milk went with goats and I am glad I did.. Very easy to handle, medicate, etc and if they need to be transported it is not a huge production like it is for our cows. I also recommend trying the milk first, but find someone who sells it raw if possible, it really tastes totally different from store bought..We usually use ours within a few days but have had it for a week or more with no difference in taste. I have to warn you though, dairy goats are addictive.. I went from the 2 origionals (they do not do well alone) to 7, 3 of which will be freshening soon..

All the people who own goats insist that the milk is not different than cows milk.

I beg to differ. Goats milk is foul stuff. I suggest that you taste goats milk from a couple of different goats before you actually buy a goat. If you like it, fine. If you don't; don't buy a goat.

And yes, I have tasted very fresh goat milk, not pasteurized and it does not taste like cows milk.

We have also done both. We had a dexter for our milk cow and we have had several breeds of goats. I like cows better personality wise but the milk bothers my stomach. They are also more expensive to feed unless you just have a ton of pasture and you can provide your own hay. Dairy goats produce more milk for less cost wise on a smaller homestead.

Extra milk here goes to feed other animals. We have really tried to establish as much of an integrated system as possible so one thing is always feeding another. We try to reduce our need for outside inputs as much as we can.

In the end which is best for each farmstead will vary based on how much land and pasture you have, how big your family is, which animal you like better, which milk suits your digestion better, etc. The health benefits of raw milk are equal assuming you can digest cow's milk.

You know, it really annoys me when people make blanket statements like this. What you are saying is that you don't like goat's milk. What people are reading is "all goats' milk is horrible". If all goats' milk was horrible, do you really think that so many people would be raising them and going to all the work that it entails, just to drink "foul" milk?

I don't like raw tomatoes. I don't go around telling the world that "tomatoes are foul".

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"Crivens!"

Half Caper Farm - breeding Saanens, Boers and Nigerian Dwarfs

Well, I think goat's milk is foul too after a day or two. I think that everyone knows that when people say things like that it's not a blanket statement of fact but, rather, my opinion.

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Differant people have differant tastes, I love cows milk, I will drink goat milk. Safer? doesn`t matter, both are safe to use. As far as keeping time, cows milk will keep longer as far as I`m concerned. I have customers who have kept cows milk for three weeks, I don`t know if goats milk will keep that long without being frozen. > Thanks Marc

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Goat OR cow.. If fresh milk tastes "foul" then there is likely a issue with the health of the animal or the handling of the milk.

i have seen studies as well, that say goat's milk is healthier than cow's milk. i cannot list all the reasons given, but if you google a bit, i am sure you can find some info.

and i too had thought goat milk 'foul' for a long time--i was given a taste of it by a young boy, who'd just milked his goat. but, now that i look back, that goat roamed free (who knows what it ate), the boy i am SURE wasn't worried about keeping the milk clean, so i am certain that often others get this same introductions as i did, which is very sad.

i got my first goat as a loaner, to try it out. i brought that first taste to my lips and quivering, took it. HEY! that was GOOD! i was shocked, i fully expected to have to learn to like it. no--just had to learn to keep it clean and goat well fed. i've never had bad milk from my girls. never. but i am careful at the handling of the milk, and the girls' management.

Wags; that is very interesting about the Nigerian goats. We have never had any but that would be a plus being able to make butter easily. Also the staggered breeding would be good. Anyone know where Nigerian goats are sold in Canada? We love our Nubian/ Alpine/Lamacha crosses and their milk is sweet and good but a little Nigerian doe would be an interesting addition.

Thanks for that tidbit... I have known it for a long time but never had really thought about it until reading this. It's going to be goats milk for this house!

I have to have goats milk. I find the secret is a clean, cold fresh glass quart milk bottle and cool the milk quickly. The tall narrow bottle chills the milk faster. I don't keep milk long, 2 days. I milk pygoras and make butter, soft cheese, cottage cheese and yogurt....James

i plan on dexters.. kinda a middle of the road choice 4% (small globule) fat milk and tastey meat.
does anyone that advocated goat .. eat mature goat meat?

The blanket statements I don't like are that if your goat milk has a flavor problem, you are doing something wrong - can't have anything to do with it coming from a goat.

I followed all the rules with the goats, and got tired of family rejecting the stuff. Switched to cows and have not had one day of bad tasting milk - no complaints. Did my methods suddenly improve when I got a cow? I don't think so.

Doesn't matter if I've super chilled the milk, or practiced ultra sanitation, or had the cow avoid certain plants, etc, etc.

I do think some goats are better than others, and diifferent people have different tastes. But overall, at least in our culture, more people have a problem with goat milk than cow.

The flavor problem I noticed reminded me of the stink the bucks have. I figure it's some kind of hormonal thing related to goat. Which reminds me, that is another thing you're supposed to do is never have a buck near a doe when she's milking, or his stink will cause bad flavor.

Goats definitely have advantages if you like their milk. But my personality and theirs don't match, they like to climb fences and chew the bark off trees. They need disbudding with a hot iron (cows have polled breeds) or they'll stick their horns through fences and get stuck and the neighbor dogs will kill them.