If you use a surge milker....

[hobbyfarmer]

could you walk me through your clean up practices? I had one years ago and lugged buckets of warm water back and forth to the barn for cleaning but my milking area at that time was actually the barn aisle. I worried about the inflations and the bucket taking on barn odors while air drying in the barn and the bucket was way too big to store in my teeny tiny kitchen. I milked by hand when I needed milk for us and just used the machine for the daily kid-feeding milk.

I eventually sold the herd & that machine and now I'm looking for another. The man I bought the first one from is still in business and I trust his work. Also, I have a much bigger barn now. The milking area is still not enclosed though. Do you air dry your machine in the barn or do you lug it back and forth from the house? How often do you use dairy sanitizer and soap? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[sammyd]

we use a bucket milker and have tried different methods.
The last one we used (and how we will do it when they start freshening) was to bring in 2 buckets of hot water before milking (only works if you have a few goats otherwise it gets too cool.
After milking we suck a bit of the plain water through and dump it. Then we add chlorinated pipeline detergent to one bucket and acid rinse to the other.
We dip the milker unit in and out of the bucket of detergent which simulates the air injector found on pipelines. Swoosh the soapy water around before dumping back in the bucket. Then same thing with the acid rinse. The wash waters get dumped outside or if it's a nice warm day we can use it on the floor of the barn.
We hang the milker stuff out in the garage/barn and bring it in every couple of days for a good tear down and scrubbing followed by a bleach sanitize.

Our barn isn't grade A and is basically half a 4 car garage with pens and a milking stand. We drink our milk, make cheese with it, and feed calves with it, never had a problem.

[julieq]

We have an antifreeze faucet in the barn with a hose on it for cleaning the milking machine and lines. There's an old sink in the milk room but it's not currently hooked up. We also use two plastic buckets, one for sucking up detergent and one for rinse. The surge bucket is dumped in the old cement channel, which drains outside. We have big hooks on the wall that we hang the bucket, lid and lines on to drain. We lay a clean garbage bag over the top to keep dust out. We've never had any problems with our milk.

[hobbyfarmer]

Thank you both. We have cold water to the barn but I'll have to carry hot water to warm it in the buckets. The garbage bag cover is a great idea. I never thought of just covering the thing. I can clean it with the bucket method twice a day but I was wondering how often people usually bring it inside for the more thorough sanitizing.

I can air dry the bucket and inflations in the barn but the barn is going to smell like goats no matter what and I can't afford to build an enclosed milk room this year. I really like the smaller, dishwasher friendly bucket with the Hoegger milking system but that thing costs a fortune.

We're not looking for Grade A or anything, just trying to get some idea of how other people handle their cleaning chores before we get started with a system of our own.

[sammyd]

build a rack to hold it upside down and you should be all right.
We have a DeLaval floor bucket and it hangs upside down so nothng gets in it....

[farmmom]

Since I milk on my back porch, I just carry it on into my kitchen and take it apart. I wash everything well, using the long scrub brush wires in the tubing and an inflation brush. After rinsing, everything is dipped in a food safe disinfectant and put to dry.