share milking?

[francismilker]

Do any of you share milk with your does and kids like some do with cows and calves? I've got an Alpine that's producing not quite enough for my demands and had a lamancha kid over last weekend. I'd like to milk her once a day and let the kid have the rest. It's something I've done with cows a lot. Does it work with goats?

[Alice In TX/MO]

Do you mean penning the kid at night, milking in the morning, turning the kid with the dam during the day? Yup. Lots of us do that.

[mygoat]

Yes, you can pen a kid overnight and then milk in the morning. Most people start doing that once the kid hits 2 weeks old. If it were me, I'd still milk the doe out at least once a day so the single kid doesn't make her lopsided and keeps production even.

The penning overnight will also help the doe's udder stretch for capacity as well as helping develop the teats to proper size. A friend of mine dam raises and even though she does pen kids for 12 hrs for milking, her doe's teats and udders never get the same shape as does that have their kids pulled at birth. Her FF'ers teats stayed the same size all last year, and she freshened this year and her teats are STILL small. IMO, if she had pulled kids the teats would have changed. I don't prefer to dam raise and pen kids overnight, but it works for many, many people.