The Beginners Guide to Training Pack Goats, 23 Reasons Why You Should Raise Goats in Your Homestead, How to Train Your Goats to Use a Litter Box (and Save $40 Easily), Kiko Goat: Breed Info, Characteristics, Breeding, and Care, How to Handle the Odd Behavior of a Goat Buck in Rut, 31 Goat Breeds for Milk, Meat, & Fiber You’ll Need on the Farm, Kalahari Red Goat: Breed Info, Characteristics, Breeding, and Care, The Complete Guide to Choosing Dairy Goat Stock, Angora Goat: Breed Info, Characteristics, Breeding, and Care, 12 Easy Ways to Get Your Goats Ready for Winter and the Freezing Cold, Spanish Goat: Breed Info, Characteristics, and Care. A goat is a four legged animal which is a close relative of sheep. Without anyone to teacher her, she learned a lot of her farming techniques from Reddit, which earned her the nickname, “the internet farmer" amongst some of the other local farmers for awhile. When pulling down be sure to leave your thumb and index finger in place, but you’ll squeeze your remaining fingers and the palm of your hand together as you pull down. And all those people who talk about the birth fluid thing also bottle raise kids. Basically keep going until she at least calms down and lets you milk her. To use goat milk as an alternative feed source requires that th… We had a LaMancha one time that was producing about a quart extra every day when her kids were newborns. This should pull the milk … The milking activity will take 12 to 15 minutes per doe, plus milk preparation time. My ultimate goal is that all of my does will run into the milking parlor and jump on the milk stand, and I will be able to milk them without even closing the head gate on the stanchion. Great advise! There was an error submitting your subscription. Because there is one way to milk long teats — wrap all four fingers around the teats and squeeze from the top down. If their kids are the only ones getting the milk, then they think that the kids are the only ones that should be getting it. Now all you have to do is build a fence & shelter, purchase a goat (or 20), buy some food, breed your goat, wait for your goat to deliver babies, wait 2 weeks, then you can milk your goat! I raised Boer goats for years in 4H as a kid, but I recently decided to jump into dairy goats because I love goats milk everything!! You won’t be able to get all of the milk, and that’s fine. Your pinky finger may not be strong enough to actually do much, so if it needs to just hang out, that’s fine too. Wasn’t able to finish the goat barn this year so looking to have goat next Spring! So, the goat also needs to learn to be milked. Your fingers get tired pretty fast doing that unless you’ve had enough practice that you’ve developed abnormal strength in your fingers. This is totally new to her, so she just needs to understand that you’re not going to hurt her. After that squeeze firmly (never hardly). I’m not sure if we’ve become that good at training them, or if we just culled all the lines that were not good at raising their kids and letting us milk them. However, that’s not usually possible. Is raising goats for milk legal in my area? We've been lucky so far, fingers crossed, knock on wood and all that jazz. https://thriftyhomesteader.com/a-beginners-guide-to-goats/. 07.17.2019 by thriftyhomesteader // 28 Comments. If a doe is raising her own kids, you are not necessarily going for volume when you milk her, although I’ve had goats that would produce more than their kids could consume. Stay tuned for the first newsletter in the morning, straight to your inbox. I leave the other side for her 5 month old baby, but I would like to sell the baby now. What Is the CDT Vaccine and Why Is It Important for Sheep and Goats? I assume you’ll get a much smaller amount at each milking, maybe none on occasion. Thrifty Homesteader is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. She used a goat-milking machine for about a year before it broke and she had to milk her goats by hand for a week until she could fix it — that's when she started hand-milking her goats full time. One mistake some people make is to only put them on the milk stand when they are going to do something unpleasant like vaccinate or trim hooves. I always start with something simple and don’t move on to anything more complicated unless simple proves to not work. They never received grain anywhere else. However, since you don’t milk one side, you don’t really know how much she’s making there, so will be tough to know for sure. It is best to sanitize equipment 30 minutes or fewer before use. A sudden big drop in milk production can tell you that something is up, such as the doe is sick or in heat. It sounds like a scale in the milking parlor is the way to go. There are over more than three hundred breeds of goat and most of them are known for the quality milk and meat that they provide. Thank you for this very useful post! If a doe has two or more kids, do not start separating them from mom overnight on a regular basis until they are two months old. If you give up now, it will be much harder later on. If not, just squeeze the teats anyway, even if you only get drops. You want them to associate the milk stand with happy times and positive images, so that they will be beating down the door to get into the milking parlor — really. If you can get them up there within 12 hours, you are usually good. But it’s been years since we’ve had a doe that took longer than three or four days to settle down and let us milk her. You are brilliant! You may think that only you need to learn to milk a goat, but it’s not a natural thing for a goat to let a human take her milk. She’ll probably get mad when you do that, but just stay calm and put your hand on her udder until she calms down again. There are three ways to milk a goat: Catching the goat’s head in a head catch (or tying them up) and sitting on a bucket (or stool) set on the ground and milking the goat from their left or right side while they are standing on the ground. By the time they were a couple of weeks old, however, they were consuming most of what she was producing. Should I just let the doeling’s side dry up, and continue the milking as before? So I lucked into a mature doe that’s been bred for my first addition (she is fairly close to kidding – a month or two away) and I was curious about finding a friend for her so close to her due date. Otherwise, the goat will wind up with a lopsided udder, which could be permanent. 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