[Caprice Acres]

I milk the first 5 streams from each teat into a 1 qt ss bowl every milking with my two does. I just alternate like normal but I count to ten. Anywho, The second doe to be milked is Heidi. She apparently still loves milk, hehe. She is 2 years old. She always gets the 'discarded' milk after she is done eating her grain. It's funny, because she'll only drink her and the other alpine's milk... If I try to add a mini's milk to it, she refuses it with an indignant snort, hehe. My milkroom was an old cow milking parlor, and has a trench through the middle of the room. I put the bowl in there at an angle so she can get as much milk out of it as possible. She gets mad if she doesn't get her milk.

The other day I put out two 1 gal ice cream buckets full of milk out for the chickens. I wasn't thinking and I just put it in their open coop, which the goats often get into (they can't get to chicken feed, don't worry). Well, later that day I went back out and sure enough Heidi was nosing the empty buckets. Usually it takes quite a while for the chickens to empty both buckets, so I know Heidi had a hand with it.

 

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Goats are pretty smart creatures...it does not take them long to figure out that milk comes out of my teats and if it is ok to drink it out of a bowl, than why not nurse myself. A practice that you never want to start because you will never break them of it. Vicki

 

[Patty0315]

Also if she is drinking milk from another doe it is possible to spread disease. Sorry


Patty

 

[chamoisee]

One of my best does got CAE from slurping down a bucket of CAE+ milk as a kid.

This same doe, is now mature and our best milker. She peaks at close to 2 gallons, on management that is frankly less than ideal. Because she milks so heavily, she loses flesh easily. One year I was especially worried about her and started feeding her own milk back to her. She loved it and it put fleh back on her, even though it seemed a bit counterproductive to milk a doe and then feed it all back to her...but we had more milk than we could use anyway.

Anyhow, she still loves milk. In fact, the minute you're doen milkign her, she starts to twitch and fidget and crane her neck around hoping to get that milk! If you let her off the stand and have set the milk somewhere else, watch out, she'll lunge for it and drink it all!

She's never started self-sucking, possibly because she's a very deep and long bodied doe. I'm not sure she can reach. As you can see, though, this is a situation that could be a definite problem. She expects the milk every single time she gets milked, is hard to handle if you don't give it to her, and would be very likely to run over and drink it if given half a chance- not an ideal situation if you need your milk or have one one milker or she is not CAE+ yet and others might be, for exampel at a show. This doe doesn't care whose milk it is- if there is milk anywhere within her range of scent, she will drink it.

It worked well for us with this particular doe, but I don't recommend the practice. My humble opinion.