what to do with extra milk?

[chicky momma]

Thinking of getting a few dairy goats in the spring. Just discovered that goat milk doesn't separate like cows milk. Which means to make butter or anything we'll need to get a cream separator. Was thinking of possibl7y making soap too, do I need to separate the milk to make soap?

What do you do with extra milk? Lisa

[dezeeuwgoats]

At my house - there's no such thing as 'extra' milk! What we don't drink, or make into cheese, or something else (like now - it's eggnog!) gets fed to our dog, cats, pigs, and then chickens - in that order.

I also feed the whey from cheesemaking to the animals as well. Not sure about separating the milk to make soap - I don't believe you have to do that, unless you wanted an additional fat content by adding more cream to the recipe.

Niki

[nduetime]

The only reason I seperate the milk when making soap is that I can use the cream for butter etc. and do not have to have it for the soap. I use the milk for drinking, butter, cheese, yogurt, soap, sour cream, and give the rest to the cats, chickens, pigs if we are doing one and always have friends who need a little extra for their bottle babies. Between our dairy uses and the animals there is never any milk "just tossed"

[moosemaniac]

First, we drink a lot of it; we make soap; we make cheese; we make fudge and truffles for gifts. I make butter on occasion...gotta get that cream separator out of storage.

Ruth

[mary,tx]

We use it for drinking, yogurt, icecream, and pudding. We can extra milk to feed to bottle goats or calves later in the year, and freeze some for when the goats are dry.

[dezeeuwgoats]

Moosemaniac - would you mind sharing any of your recipes for goat's milk truffles and/or the fudge? I've never made either, with any type of milk, and would like to give it a try! Sounds like a neat gift.

Thanks;
Niki

[mpillow]

Surplus milk is the key to raising homestead meat....A sucker calf....pigs...chickens. And of course all the other "table fare" previously mentioned.

I think a calf is a good first try along with chickens(just plain easy). Get a calf about 3-5 days old from a dairy (Holstiens work good) and bottle feed. You will need to band the little bull calf by 1 month old but you can keep him on the bottle for as long as you have milk. Heck, I canned 60Q of goat milk and our calf is still enjoying his bottle at 6.5 months old and 500# I just dried the goats off but he'll have milk until they freshen....I've also just poured milk in with his grain ration so he's used to it.

Goats can really become the base level of food production on the homestead.

[chicky momma]

Thanks everyone!
I'm back excited about having goats! I wanted them to help with our sustainability on the farm. Plan to try making butter, kefir, cheese and soap just to name a few. I wouldn't mind having a cow but hubby says thats too much. Lisa

[homebirtha]

We use our extra milk for the other critters, chickens, turkeys, pigs. We did our first pigs this fall and they gained weight really really well on milk. And the meat is absolutely delicious.

[Charleen]

Extra milk???? What's that?????

We freshened 17 goats this past spring and we're currently milking 6; hopefully we'll still have some milking before the first freshenings in Feb, so we won't be without milk.

We drink the goat milk, regularly make kefir and yogurt. We haven't bought store milk in years. We feed the milk to our cats, dogs, chickens and pigs. We raised 11 pigs this year and our butcher praises us for how nice our pork meat is. It's so good that she's offered to sell our pigs for us if we can't find buyers on our own. We've also bartered with neighboring people. Milk for wood shavings, milk for cleaning our gutters, etc.

No, you don't need to separate the cream from the milk when making goat's milk soap, unless you'd like to make goat's cream soap. It's best to freeze it before soaping, but that's a whole 'nother thread to post.

[chicky momma]

I read in another thread that when frozen the milk separates. If this is true can I just freeze it, thaw it and make butter? Or am I just complicating things? Don't have a cream separater, thinking they may be expensive and a pain to use/clean. Lisa

[Charleen]

Originally Posted by chicky momma

I read in another thread that when frozen the milk separates. If this is true can I just freeze it, thaw it and make butter? Or am I just complicating things? Don't have a cream separater, thinking they may be expensive and a pain to use/clean. Lisa

No, when frozen it doesn't separate into cream & milk. It separates into water & solids (proteins, fat, minerals, etc).

Cream separators can be expensive. You might just try leaving a wide mouth quart jar in the fridge and check it after a few days. Ladle the cream off and freeze it until you have enough to make butter with.

[goatmarm]

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[GrannyCarol]

Anyone know if sheep's milk will separate that way? (Wide mouth jar)

Thanks!