I have gone through a lot of milking systems and products, trying to find what works for me and my goats. I have arthritis starting in my hands and wrists, and this limits the number of goats I can milk by hand. My wonderful Mini-Mancha has teats that are too small for me to hand milk. I'm hand milking two full size goats, but I had to come up with something else for my Mini.
On another thread, I posted the homemade milker that resembles the Maggidan's Milker.
I have several EZ Milkers, but pumping that handle isn't much easier than hand milking.
I bought a used goat milker with a Surge bucket and pulsator, but I found that cleaning lines and heavy buckets was more time consuming (and irritating) than hand milking.
Being an incurable tinkerer, I have now put parts of the EZ Milker together with my vacuum system to use for the Mini-Mancha. The vacuum pump runs, the Surge bucket acts as a ballast tank (but doesn't get any milk in it), the pulsator creates a healthy suck and relax cycle for the EZ Milker bottle and tube/insert assembly.
Cassie with the EZ bottle, tube, insert.
The vinyl vacuum line runs from the EZ Milker tube to the pulsator.
This looks sloppy, but it shows that the other lines from the Surge pulsator/bucket that aren't needed are looped back and disabled.
The big picture.
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