small teats

[starcids6]

we recently got a five year old boer doe that has never been milked. She has been bred several times. We want to milk her until we breed our younger does that are toggenburg mixes. She has a beautiful udder very large she olny had one kid this time. So we were thinking great plenty of milk . She is very tame goat and is adjusting to being put in milk stand to milk but her teats are so small I can barley get two fingers on them. Needles to say the milking is taking longer with us trying to get these small teats working for us. My husband used both hands yesterday so he close off the top and then lower. Is there a secret to milking smalle teats? Anyone ever deal with this?Thanks
Becky

[Alice In TX/MO]

Make a milker:

my adaptation of Maggidan's Milker

[whinnyninny]

I bought an injector from TSC, as well as two syringes (35cc for my small-teated goat, and 60cc for my large-teated one). I used a tee-joint (for a drip irrigation system) and a couple short lengths of tubing to connect the syringes (barrel only, not the plunger) to the tubing on the injector, and I use that for milking my goats. It's sort of like the Maggidan's Milker, but half the price and this particular "hand pump" is much easier to squeeze than the Maggidan's Milker is.

You'll probably need either a 20cc or a 35cc syringe. They're cheap enough, about 80¢ apiece.

[xoxoGOATSxoxo]

Be aware that those milk pumper things dont always work! I mean, maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I've tried a whole bunch of different syringe barrels and different pumper things but I've never been able to get mine to work. The doe that I'm milking now does have very small orifices, so that might have had something to do with it. But just a heads up, it might not work.

[whinnyninny]

One of my does has small orifices, too. You have to make sure that you have suction on the teat (you'll see the teat getting sucked downwards a bit as you start to pump) or else it won't work.

[nehimama]

Even among the goats with small teats, every single one is different. You just fiddle around until you find out what finger-hold works the best, and there you go. It certainly helps that your gal is tame and probably patient with you. I have a couple does with small teats, and after a while, I can milk them out almost as quickly as one with big old sausage-shaped teats.

NeHi