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To start off this blog post I would have to clarify that these ideas are mainly for those that only have one or two goats to milk and only want the milk for soap making or a little bit to drink. The only reason we started milking our one goat was to be able to make homemade goat milk soap. So, keep that in mind while reading this post as this is not tips for milking a whole dairy herd but for those that want a little goat milk to drink or use in soap making.
First off, you need to have the right kind of goat to be milking as some goats are dairy and some are meat goats. The meat goats will not give you as much milk as a dairy goat. We have Kiko goats. They are a great goat for small farms and homesteaders. They are a duel purpose goat because they were bred to be a meat and a milk goat. They might not be as beefy as some Boar meat goats and they might not produce as much milk as a Nubian dairy goat but they will be good for both. We had 10 Kiko goats to choose from when we chose which one to milk. You would think that we would pick the friendliest so that it would be easy to milk right? No, we looked at several different factors to determine which one would be the best.
Teats. We wanted to milk a goat that had really good teats and udder. No split teats, no y teats, and no extra dud teats. We don't really want those genetics in our herd anyway so the ones that do not have excellent teats we will weed out in the next few years. For us that took away three options.
Number of kids. Since this was our Kiko's first time having kids we wanted to milk one that only had one kid to make sure that she would have plenty of milk for her kid as well as what we took. We did once a day milking and let her kid have the rest of the milk. Now, that we know what kind of milk production each one is capable of this next time when choosing a goat to milk it will not necessarily have to be one that had a single kid (as we are hoping for all twins or more). For our choice of milking this left us with only 3 to pick from. Normal dairy goats may be able to take care of multiples and still be milked once a day but we wanted to make sure that our doe could take good care of their own kids before we milk them. I think it is a little silly to milk your doe and then have to supplement her kids because you took all the milk.
Milk production. We kind of discussed this above but we wanted to make sure that the doe could make enough milk for her kids first and then us. We gave the goat we milked extra grain while we milked her and this helped her make more milk then she normally did (it helped her stand still too). Looking at the milk production of the 3 left to pick from we narrowed it down to just 1 and that is who we milked.
Personality. Some goats are just plain mean, others are completely scared of people and others are as friendly as can be. You would think we would pick a nice friendly goat to milk but no, the goat we chose did not like people. The 3 that were left on our list before looking at their milk production (who produced the most) were all scared or nervous around people. Grain helps ease their distrust around humans at least it did for Galaxy and us.
Once a day milking is a great way for you to have some milk without having to supplement and bottle feed the babies. We did once a day milking for the goat and we do it with our dairy cow as well. It has worked out very well for us. One of the main benefits about once a day milking is the fact that you can go on vacation or skip a milking time if you let the baby in with the mom. The idea of once a day milking is 12 hours with mom and 12 hours locked away from mom. With the goat we only did 9-10 hours locked away from mom because we did not really want that much milk from her as we were only using it to create a stock pile for making goat milk soap later.
We keep our goats in the barn for kidding (end of December) and have two small pens that we can lock goats away in if they are getting picked on or are sick or something. So, we used the one pen to lock Galaxy up for 9-10 hours at night and then milked her in the morning and let her out with everyone else and her kid the rest of the day.
When we first started milking her we would have one person hold her while she ate grain and one person would milk her. We did not have a milking stand but goats are smart and she learned very quickly to stand still and eat her grain while we both milked her. She was a great goat to milk but still keeps her distance from people even after all the time we spent with her. She was not scared of us while we milked her in her pen but still does not want to be around people.
When you do milk by hand, milk into glass or stainless steal dishes and place in the freezer a quick as possible. We would wash her teats with warm soapy water and strain the milk with a coffee filter and place into the freezer. If we wanted to drink it we would take it out in a hour but if we where just using for goat milk soap we would just place it into small containers and freeze completely. I have seen some people use ice trays to freeze their milk for soap making but I just used small plastic cups. Once frozen I pop them out of the cups and place in freezer bags and reuse the cups.
Let me know in the comments how you milk your goats and what kind of goats you have!
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