Milking goats!

Well it’s Wednesday 28th January now and I haven’t written for a while. The fence has been rebuilt, the ewe and lamb are happily sleeping in the strawbale shed in the pen next to the goats. The goats kids have gone…..milking….

The kids went on Sunday morning to go to live with some horses. This meant that the goats now needed milked twice a day. OH had built me a ‘goat stall’ for milking on. Well Bramble was on and back off within seconds.

After a rethink I tied the collar really close to the side wall, with a wall in front and a wall behind and me in front. Milking isn’t easy when all you have seen is on Youtube. So I persevered and got some milk eventually. The first time it all spilt on the ground because it would have added much more stress trying to get the milk in a pot.

Nutella was next, she has always been the shyer of the two and not liked being handled. It was a bit like a ‘bucking bronco’ moment again. I finally managed to milk her with her hed on the ground, both front knees on the ground one back leg and all her weight on my left arm and virtually no weight taken by her other back leg. Just to make it worse she kept trying to sit down with that back leg too so I was holding up a goat whilst trying to milk it too. Now you can use two hands to milk a goat if one hand is holding it up. So it took ages milking one side at a time, then I got cramp in my hand.

Next day I tried again and same old nonsense, but I put down a flat bottomed pot and milked Bramble. Nutella was a bit tricky again but after half an hour we got 250ml of goats milk.

I arranged to go and see a french goat milk farm to find out how I should be doing this. A very nice farmer man welcomed me and asked what sort of goats I had? ‘Pygmies’ I said, ‘aah’ said he, ‘ I have milking goats, I don’t know anything about pygmies!’ ‘well’, I ventured, ‘they are the same animal so shouldn’t milking be the same too?’ He contemplated for a moment then said, ‘come and see, this is how I milk my goats’

I went to see and thankfully I had been doing the right thing after all. Then he asked, ‘ how much milk do your goats give?’ I said, ‘250ml on a good day’, he smiled and said,’ that’s not very much is it? Is it worth milking twice a day for 250ml?’ ‘No’ I said and then he explained how to stop goats producing milk. What do you think I did next? Yes I went home and put in place the –NO MORE MILK PLAN. The goats did calm a bit as they got used to milking, but Nutella still had to have one leg held up.

Today I went to Jean Michels farm to see Hugo (ram), he didn’t recognise me! He will go to a new home next week.