Milking help for an older doe first time milked

tioga12 · #1 07/28/06, 06:11 AM

My newly acquired 4.5 year old doe has never been milked up until last Monday. I am new at milking, too, but feel that I have gotten the hang of it. I do not rub or squeeze the udder and it comes out well. I know this girl has lots of milk, but after a couple of days of getting her used to being milked, she has decided to kick and hop around. So far we haven't found a solution that worked. Any suggestions? Will a hobble actually be successful? (Home made nylon one did nothing) I am afraid she will break a leg trying to get free. I know her production is going to decrease if I don't keep her milked out a couple times a day, and don't know if she could get mastitis or plugged if I just let her dry out cold turkey (I really want to keep her in milk, for now. She might be pregnant, but if so probably not more than a month or two.) She doesn't appear to be upset, just decides not to stand. We feed her her favorite only when she is in the stand. It doesn't seem to be buying us any time to do milking - since yesterday, she has decided its not for her!

Egypt Run · #2 07/28/06, 06:29 AM

Sounds like you got your work cut out for you. Put the stand so one side is up against a wall. Sounds like she is set in her ways. Is their anyone around you that has good experiance milking goats? If so try and get them to milk her a few times. We HAD one doe that I had to put her on the stand lean my shoulder in to her hip and milked her into a plastic quart jar one teat at a time. We sold her. I will pray for you.
Steve

tioga12 · #3 07/28/06, 06:33 AM

I have to lean into this one, too. I get her left hip into the crook of my left shoulder, lean forward and press against her firmly; reach in front of her legs, and milk both teats at once as quickly as possible, as she may start acting up at any time. (now it seems she won't allow anything)
Looks like we are in agreement about NAIS

Julie2260 · #4 07/28/06, 06:37 AM

Put her on a milk stand that sets against a wall. I use a piece of twine on a nail above her back leg. When she starts dancing around I put her back leg in a loop that I made with the twine so that her leg is pointing down. My doe will stand very nicely to be milked as long as she has food in front of her, but once she eats it, she starts dancing & kicking-time to hike her leg up! Works pretty good for me. Hope this helps.

tioga12 · #5 07/28/06, 08:01 AM

This tying the leg up thing is not working for me! I tried it several times and am afraid she will injure herself because she hops around so much.

tioga12 · #6 07/28/06, 08:30 AM

These are our first goats, and we haven't had the experience of kidding yet, and I have questions about bottle feeding. If I want to milk the goats, I should bottle feed, I understand. Maybe I could let them in with this dancer of mine when they are seperated from their mother if she doesn't learn to stand still, and she could nurse them - would the kids nurse off their mother and another doe? Would her horns be a problem as she is very dominant but has an otherwise great personality? I plan on disbudding our kids, and keeping the horned ones seperate from the polled ones.

trob1 · #7 07/28/06, 08:39 AM

If she isnt letting you easily milk her I dont think she would stand for another baby to nurse her. Very few does will stand for anothers baby to nurse from them.

tioga12 · #8 07/28/06, 08:40 AM

Hmm, I was under the impression that they were pretty liberal with that! Didn't know.

ChickenMom · #9 07/28/06, 08:43 AM

Mine did the same thing, a 3 year old that had never been milked. She was my first and I didn't know what I was doing. I was told to just keep it up and eventually she calmed. Every once in a while she will have a "fit" but not so much anymore. I have been milking her for 2 months now. When I started she would come completely off the ground, scared me to death! I was beginning to think I didn't really want milk goats! You couldn't even touch her, I had to rope her to get her to milk. Now she comes to the feed and lets me place the tether around her neck, of course this is after me being kicked, butted, bitten, bruised, and a lot of spilled milk. LOL She is an excellent goat now but it took a lot of work.

tinetine'sgoat · #10 07/28/06, 09:15 AM

Is it possible that her udder is sore? We had one that began to hop like that when being milked because she was starting to develop mastitis and it hurt her to be milked. Do you feel any lumps in the udder? It might be too that after a few days of milking that her udders are just very tender right now from the friction of milking if she wasn't used to that. Might try a good udder salve if that is the case. Hope it works out for you.

tioga12 · #11 07/28/06, 09:16 AM

Well, mine isn't that cantankerous, :-0 but I guess there's hope. I haven't given up yet!!! :P

huntingnappanee · #12 07/28/06, 11:35 AM

When I started giving our does almost all their food (grain or pellets) on the milk stand they started to look forward to getting up there. Most of the time I mix the feed with hay and it takes them longer to eat it. However, even with this, it did take a few weeks for our new milker to calm down.