Milking gone awry
May 13, 2011
Well, we had tried milking our goats once before and hadn't had a lot of success by hand, so we took the advice of a friend and ordered a maggidans milker. The nice part is that with such small teats, the dwarf nigerians were bound to be hard to milk on a regular basis. The milker works very similarly to big commercial milking machines, but with the gentle touch that only pumping by hand can give.
When it arrived in the mail today, both Emma and I got so excited about all the fresh milk we were going to be drinking. Then the fairytale became reality. I think I might have gotten a teaspoon of sheep milk from Candace, but none from the goat ladies. Turns out you don't just "flip a switch" and start milking. I think we're going to have to work our way down a path of trust and keep them very calm, because none of our animals actually had a good time. While I could coerce milk out by hand, they were simply to flipped out to let down their milk for the milker to draw out.
So that was our first milking adventure. Hopefully we'll look back at this post in three years, surrounded by jars of delicious goat and sheep milk, and laugh. In the meantime, the whole experience was very draining. And combined with bed time at 2 a.m. this morning and waking up at 6:30 a.m. the only way to make the day okay was a trip to Barncastle.
