someone please school me on goat milk

[shdybrady]

Well as some of you know I lost my doeling and buckling. So we plan to keep on milking my nubian for all she is worth lol. Can someone teach the me the ropes of what to do with the milk? I saw there is a cheese sticky. But right now I want to make butter. How do you go about this? Also how long do I need to wait before I can drink her milk after giving birth?

[LoneStrChic23]

It will vary by doe. I could still taste the colostrum in my Alpine's milk for about 12 days after kidding.....Doesn't taste great. My mini had no colostrum taste 4 days after kidding. Depends on the doe.

I'll let others chime in on butter & such, & you can check out the dairy forum here on HT for more help on dairy products.

Please make sure you're using an udder wash prior to milking & a good teat dip when you're done.

I make my own udder wash by mixing 3 tablespoons of chlorehexidine (Nolvasan), 1 tablespoon of glycerin to 1 quart of water. I keep mine in a nice spray bottle. I spray the udder from all sides until dripping, wipe with a clean towel, then repeat. Make sure the udder is dry & your hands are clean before milking. Afterwards, use a teat dip. Lots available, but my favorite is the Fight Bac spray as it's so easy to use & didn't dry my girls teats out like the iodine ones did.

Make sure she has clean, DRY bedding so when she lays down her udder isn't getting nasty.

I use mens beard trimmers (cheap $20 Noreclo set from WM) to trim the udder hair, the belly area in front of the udder & any long hairs on the inside of her rear legs. Makes milking much cleaner.

Good luck.....so sorry you lost your babies, but if you take great care of her udder & make sure she has plenty of alfalfa, you should at least be able to enjoy yummy fresh milk & all the goodies you can make from it.

[Cannon_Farms]

I freeze the colostrum milk that is the milk for the first 24 hours, this is priceless in a case when you loose the doe instead of the kids. The milk may taste off for several days after that but normally within 72 hours you have good ol sweet goat milk.

To make goat butter you need a cream separator which run a couple hundred bucks, not the best or most practical use for goat milk as you get very little since there is very little cream in goat milk.

Yogurt is a popular treat, as well as ice cream and cajeta (sp?) aka caramel. We play with making cheese from simple things such as lemon juice and vinegar as well as renet using different herbs. It takes a lot of milk to make a little cheese so its a good user upper.

Soap is a small use of goat milk but popular, raising pigs or chickens is another use as well. We will be buying a bottle calf to use any extra milk up.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Yogurt, greek yogurt, pudding, chevre (soft cheese), hard cheeses, hot chocolate, etc.

I highly recommend the book Goats Produce, Too! You will love all the ideas.

http://www.amazon.com/Goats-Produce-.../dp/B000RNEYN4

[The Tin Mom]

Originally Posted by Alice In TX/MO

Yogurt, greek yogurt, pudding, chevre (soft cheese), hard cheeses, hot chocolate, etc.

I highly recommend the book Goats Produce, Too! You will love all the ideas.

http://www.amazon.com/Goats-Produce-.../dp/B000RNEYN4

Second on this. The book has great suggestions for making cheeses, etc. and she talks about general goat-milking things like what would cause specific off tastes, how quickly to chill, etc.

[sammyd]

We have made butter without the cream separator, takes some work and patience but it can be done.
We haven't washed an udder or dipped a teat for over 4 years and haven't had one case of mastitis in a milking goat.
We usually give the goat 4 days till we try the milk for personal consumption.
We make lots of cheese, ice cream, occasionally some butter, goat milk soap, and raise calves and pigs as well as just drinking our goats milk...

[andabigmac]

And fudge! That one is the best reason of all to own dairy goats.

[wmsff]

I've made butter several times without a separator. What I did was left the milk in a jar for 36 hours or so, undisturbed. Then, using a as ice cream scoop, skimmed off the cream into another jar. After several days, I had enough for butter. You won't get much. I had, I think, 8-10 oz cream and got something like 3.5-4 oz butter.

My kids don't like to drink the milk unless I skim it at least once.

My two does were lamanchas and I did pasteurize the milk if that makes a difference.

[shdybrady]

Alright we have milked her ptetty regularly now and besides the the first milking, which was extremely yellow, we have about a gallon. Here is my question though. *fter we are done milking her each time. Can we take the milk and combine it in one container? I think we are going to do soap since the milk will probably taste alittle off. Or am I suppose to skim each batch and then combine it?

[eclipchic]

I can only tell you how we do it. We take the fresh milk and after the quick chill it goes into the fridge for a couple days until we see a cream line. We skim the cream and shake it in a quart jar until it separates into butter and buttermilk. Then we knead the butter, rinse and salt it. This works great for us and our single milker, I can imagine though with more milkers the process is more complicated. It's not a lot of butter so we don't do it very often

for the quick chill (trying to get it from 100 degrees to around 35) we stick the milk in a mason jar and it sits in our icecream machine bucket (the kind you freeze) in the freezer for at least a half hour. Gotta set a timer though or you'll forget and have frozen milk by the next milking. There's lots of ways to do it though.

[LoneStrChic23]

I don't skim my milk unless I'm saving cream up in the freezer to make whipped cream

I also don't combine milkings, but I probably would if it was just for soap.

When I was milking two does I'd combine their milk, but I never mixed AM milking with PM milking. My milk has always had a long shelf life with no funky taste.