I apologize in advance for the length of this post! Please hear me through if you can - I really need your help!
I've been hand milking 2 does for the past 6 months and just this past week invested in our first milking machine. Yippee! - or so I thought.
I started using it this Tuesday and from that very first time have had the same exact problem every milking - the milk won't strain!
The first thing I did was a SCC count on my girls - both were so low that they didn't even register on the test (Porta SCC). Then, at the next milking, I started milking by hand into my old bucket and then half way through, switched to the machine. Sure enough, the milk that I had hand milked out flowed right through the filter in no time while, once again, the milk that had been pumped through the bucket milker wouldn't budge after about 30 seconds. It starts as a strong stream but after about 5 seconds, starts to get thinner and thinner until it's barely a trickle. Then it drips about once every 5 seconds. Even changing the filter doesn't work - I tried and it took 5 filters and 2 hours to get a gallon strained! By that time, the milk had been out for so long, I just fed it to the pigs :badmood
I had saved some of what we had been able to strain from the first milking and when we did a taste test that night it was, as my husband put it, "earthy". Usually our milk tastes sweet and fresh with no goaty or off flavors for weeks (on the rare occasion it lasts that long!). This milk though, by Thursday, only 2 days later, tasted like a buck had rolled around in it!
I had cleaned and sanitized the entire unit (borderline obsessively) before the first use (and after each subsequent milking) and had also replaced the filter in the pulsator. I even used compressed air to remove all dust from the vacuum pump.
I called the manufacturer of the unit (caprine supply) and they were gracious enough to help me troubleshoot for over an hour even though the unit was used. After walking through my milking and cleaning procedures they were just as baffled as I was and tried to convince me that it must be that my goats were nearing the end of lactation and had thicker milk than usual... even though I had already told them that I had done a hand milk vs. machine milk straining test with the same animals on the same milking.
After 4 and a half days of this, I'm convinced that the machine is somehow damaging my milk, breaking the fat globules. This would explain the off flavors developing and the difficulty in straining (I think). What makes me think this is happening is that there is a greasy film on the milk when I pour it into the strainer (when it's sitting there in a pool, you can see it floating on top) and that (hours later) when it has finally dripped through, the strainer is left with a thick greasy residue. When I remove the filter, the 3 holes have a heavy buildup of the same over them.
Is this even possible!?!? The guy from CS didn't think it was as I have been running the pump at 11 (drops to 10.5 when on the goats) and my pulsations are at 90 per minute as they recommend.
I'm at my wits end and don't know what else to try
(my pigs are very happy though!). The woman who owned the unit previously was using it for when she went to shows. She wasn't filtering the milk, just dumping it, so I haven't spoken with her yet. I had hoped to figure it out myself and not have to bother her, but now I don't know what else to try.
Does anyone have any idea of what might be going on and what I might do to fix it? Thank you for your help!!
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Bucket Milker Damaging Milk?! Please Help!
