Do I need a tote if I have a bucket? No you don't need totes until you are milking several goats. I used stainless totes for years, honestly they are heavy on their own, add 8 pounds per gallon of milk and it's just too heavy to tote from the barn to the milk/soap house. So I use food grade plastic buckets with lids.
When I strain is it from pail to tote or bottles? You can milk through a strainer, you can milk then strain into your tote, or you can milk, tote and strain it into your bottles. It depends upon your weather and how long that milk is going to be out in the barn unchilled. You don't want your milk setting out in the barn uncovered or with straw or hair in it unstrained.
What do you use for fast cooling? I fill the stainless sink in the milkroom with my milk bottles, water and ice, and pour into the bottles. By the time I am through, I dry them off an into the freezer they go.
I purchased a safegard pasteurizer anyone else use this? like dislike? I only pasteruize baby milk, so a pasteurizer doesn't hold enough milk for what I do. I use a turkey roaster with an insert that holds 5 gallons of milk.
best udder care items, cleaners or recipes for homemade udder cleaners? Whatever you choose in this catagory it must be a routine you follow religiously, you add to many steps or expensive products you can't afford during your dry period, over christmas etc...it is how you get mastitis. I milk with a machine and shave udders. So the only real cleaning is the teat itself for the inflation to go on it. So I use baby wetones that I have added some alcohol to. I teat dip with chlorhexiderm in the beginning of lactation, there is nolvasan (same drug) dips in all catalogs. Then in mid lactation when summer hits, and the barns are much cleaner, an the girls spend so much more time outside, I go back to my 1/4 cup clorox per 1 gallon of water.
Kids Bottle feed or natural? I bottle feed so I can guarantee health of my kids to my customers. Also it's the only way once your children are grown and it's just you, and babies aren't your favorite part of the farm
to get tame kids, is to bottle.
best places to shop for milking, uddercare items. Jefferspet.com or call them 1800-jeffers and get their livestock catalog. google.com Paul Hamby
cleanliness shaving the udder area do you? what do you use? how often? Absolutely, milking hairy udders, especially by hand is just plain gross.
things I absolutely should have? Should do? Less is more. If you are going to spend money spend it on a milkstand. That is how you get clean milk to start with, then clean the barn. You can get good clean milk with a shaver from wallmart to trim udders and belly, any stainless seemless bucket (think tractor supply), soap and water and individual cheap washcloths to clean with and a single use towel or paper towel per doe to dry after the washing, and you don't even need teat dip if you let the doe stand at the milkstand and finish her food for 5 mintues, the orifice naturally closes.
realmilk.com find out the regs for yourself on selling milk and cheese or any other milk product for eating. Then find out the teeth in your states regulations. It's one thing to bend the laws on USDA regulations, a whole nother problem with manufacturing food to eat and breaking health laws in your state. We all do it of course
Vicki
Thank you so much for your words of advice...realmilk is what helped me want to get goats in the first place 
A minimum would be to gather a good list of medications for emergencies, UNLESS you have a very good vet that is nearby and will come at a moment's notice.
