not drying up??

[chewie]

ok, got the icky milk totally fixed, and it hasn't returned. this milk is SO good. but I'm swimming in it, and the lodge job is hitting full tilt by friday. so I've been wanting to milk morning only. but so far, they just fill a gallon pail each morning, instead of half morning/half night. I've been milking them just a little at night, one more than the other.

at what point can i just stop night milking without harm?? I am taking a quart from one, the other I am sure I can stop nights. but by morning, they are pretty full, giving a full gallon for one, almost a full gallon for the other.

[CaliannG]

An interesting side effect that I discovered from this A.I. thing: CIDRs give out hormones that imitate pregnancy. My gallon + per day milker went to a quart within a couple of days of inserting the thing.

I have had horrible luck in drying off the does I *want* dry, so I am going to try using a CIDR. I won't have results, though, for 20 days. The does I want dry are ones I won't be breeding this fall at all.

It is something to think about. If nothing else, a CIDR will cut milk production way back.

[Backfourty,MI.]

I am new to milking this year so I don't know much other than what advice I've gotten here & read in posts but my 1 doe I've been milking since spring when I weaned her single buckling I've only been milking each morning. I didn't want to milk her twice a day because it would be WAY too much milk for us to keep up with.

Couldn't you just stop milking all together at night & just milk in the morning? Won't their production slow down a bit once their system realizes your only taking milk in the a.m.

Then when I want to start drying this doe off I'm going to start only taking half the amount of milk for a couple weeks & then stop milking all together unless she gets really tight then just take a little bit off to relieve pressure. I think that's how I understood LonstarChic21 when she posted about it on another thread awhile back.

[Alice In TX/MO]

Make cajeta and chevre cheese.

[Hollowdweller]

It's interesting. For centuries humanity has selected goats to produce lots of milk.

Now people drink less milk or really just want the goats as pets so they are trying to breed goats that don't produce lots of milk or that only really milk well for 3 or 4 months.

"Spurters and Stoppers" used to be looked down upon in the goat breeding community. Now with the proliferation of people who have goats mainly as pets or to show perhaps somebody should develop a line that is really low milking and drops off fast. Market opportunity there being missed.

I actually had a friend who did something similar but he wanted low production not dry off fast.

He lives very primitively, and with little money so he only feeds his goats about 1 coffee cup of oats a day. The area he lives in is very isolated so rather than fencing his goats IN he fences them out of his yard and garden.

He has a big comfrey patch and dries that to feed them and really doesn't feed hay, in the winter they just go and strip bark and eat evergreens in the woods.

He actually uses the milk so he started out with some mutts that were mostly saanen. He didn't breed them every year so in the summer when there was a lot of vegetation they would go up to around 3/4 gallon a day and in the dead of winter down to maybe a pint a day. That's on almost nothing like I said other than a coffee cup of grain a day and whatever they could scrounge.

Well he also likes them as pets and in the summer he was getting more milk than he needed, it's just him. So he wanted a larger herd so he went out and found I think a Nigerian buck, something that would reduce the size a bit so they consumed less and that would also cut the milk production down further so he could have a larger herd.

Now he has a herd that pretty much continuously produces at a low level without re breeding, can subsist off the land with very little feed, and he can have more of them as pets without getting overwhelmed in milk.

It was interesting when he first started this because he's poor and just took free goats from anyone. About half on the ones he took died because they could not survive on such an austere diet. However over time he's pretty much got what he wanted. He also had to select further because while some goats would milk well for years if he bred them they would die because they could not sustain a pregnancy on the survival rations but now most do because they just have like one.

[chewie]

hollow--that is a very interesting man!

yeah, I'm kinda chuckling myself--for years I yearned for goats like these 2, and now they are here, and I'm drowning!! hahaha!

I have no need to dry them up super fast, or completely, just want once a day milking, mainly due to my seasonal job which kicks in full force come thurs afternoon. eek. that job leaves me much less time for cheese making, which is the problem.

hmm, cajeta. does it can?? hadn't done that one in a long time. some jars of that would be handy, and I could do it while the job is going too. more info on that please??

and, at what point do I know I can stop milking at night? so far, I just take some, maybe a quart of the one girl, so she doesn't blow up by morning.