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The udder is cleared with a medicated wet wipe (Photo by Anna Oakford)

HAVING got yourself the dairy goat, whether she is bought-in as a milking animal or has arrived at this happy state by breeding on your own holding, the object of the exercise is to provide hygienically produced dairy products for your house on as long a term basis as possible.

If you have bought in the doe as a dairy goat and she has no kids at foot, you now have a twice daily routine to maintain with no days off!

You, or someone that is known to the goat, must be prepared to milk as far as possible every twelve hours in order to maintain a constant milk supply without health hazard to you or the goat. Think very carefully about this before you buy and commit to this undertaking. Alternatively, or in my opinion, essentially, you will have bred from this doe yourself or bought her with one or two kids at foot who are suckling from her. Even if the kids are three months old, as long as they have had free access to the udder from birth you will have no problem in converting this animal to a useful dairy provider.

My own preference in the management of "house" dairy goats is not to wean the kids at an early age.

I leave the kids on the mother for two weeks full time. When the kids are beginning to eat some concentrate ration and hay or grass, which will be at around this age, I separate the doe from the kids for 12 hours overnight. I then milk the doe first thing in the morning and then return the kids to mum for the rest of the day.

This works well if you are out at work in the day for obvious reasons, but can also work well if you have many jobs to do on the holding during the day or have young children to consider.

Advanced intelligence
The added benefit is that the kids will "strip out" the mother's udder really thoroughly after you have milked and during the day and lower the risks of mastitis tremendously. When you separate the kids from the doe, put them in an adjacent pen where they can see the mother and she them and make sure that the sides are high enough that neither of the parties will take a leap into the other pen.

I once had a very agile Golden Guernsey who could do this and further demonstrated her advanced intelligence by jumping back into her pen when she heard me approach in the morning! It took me several days of spying to realise what the scenario was that purveyed an empty udder from 12 hours in isolation!

Swirling the milk to check for signs of mastitis etc (Photo by Anna Oakford)

The kids need to be fed a small amount of concentrate/creep feed at the point of separation and some fresh browsings or hay to keep them going overnight. Also make sure that they have a clean water supply which is in a shallow bucket that they can easily reach into. If you have a number are free range does, the best way is to bring the kids up to a building overnight for their own safety. You can put similarly aged kids all in a building together and they will have tremendous fun playing together.

Give them some old cardboard boxes to play with and perhaps a bale of straw in the middle of the pen to jump on. In the morning, they always find the right mother, so you can usually just let them out and open the gate to the mothers' field. If you are milking more than one goat, don't let the kids back to the mothers until you have milked them all. It can get very noisy otherwise!

Avoid contamination
Milking technique: First bring your goat into a quiet enclosed area which is clean and free of soiled bedding, free range hens or anything else that can contaminate the milk. Keep your dog/cats out of the milking area while you are milking.

If you are lucky enough to have a milking bench so much the better and the goat will quickly learn to jump up on it as soon as you put some food in a bucket at the front of the stand. I find it is just as easy to stand the goat on the normal floor surface and sit on a low stool or one of those plastic footstools that you can buy in most hardware stores for a few pounds. Make a small pen with some hurdles or have the goat stand close to a solid wall so that she has a "stop" on one side of her.

You will need the following:

Bucket of warm water with a non tainting sterilising fluid added to it

4 dry clean cloths (such as a standard dish cloth) for each goat you are going to milk OR proprietary udder wipes

Udder Cream

Clean receptacle for milking into, with a lid.

Stainless steel is best but a small plastic bucket kept solely for the purpose will do equally well.

Small plastic cup
The most important thing with milking is to avoid contamination of the milk so you must make every effort to achieve this, particularly if you do not want to pasteurise the milk which changes its qualities.

Wear clean clothes or better still an overall kept solely for the purpose and stored in a plastic bag between milkings.

If you are right handed, you will probably feel most comfortable milking on the goat's near side (left) If you are left handed, the opposite.

Bring the goat to the milking area and attach her to a tie ring or to the bars of the pen. She must be comfortable but not have enough rope to turn around.

If you are operating the "separation at night"

technique, she will be pretty full in the udder and probably very pleased to be milked. A new mother which has not been hand milked before might be ticklish and jumpy and so you must be patient and kind but positive in your actions. Be aware that she may dance around a bit and your first attempts may not be so successful and result in much spilled milk but hopefully no tears! Whatever you do don't lose your temper! Angry goats can be demonic!! A stressed goat will not let down her milk without a fight and udder damage ensues (see picture 1).

Routine sequence
Try to be as relaxed as possible and feed the goat her concentrates to get her to be likewise. Milking animals get "conditioned" to letting down their milk and so a routine sequence is important. Once the sequence is established, the goat will be very easy to milk indeed.

Rinse your hands in the sterilising bucket and wet one of the cloths. Thoroughly wipe the udder or wash it if required. With the second cloth, repeat the process. If the udder is clean, the cloth will be too. With another cloth, dry the udder.

Put a small amount of udder cream onto your hands and rub in and then rub onto the udder. This is just to moisturise it so it shouldn't be too greasy.

You now need to check the milk on both udders before you begin milking in earnest (see picture 2).

Gently take two or three squirts from the first side into the plastic cup. If it is clean, white with no lumpy bits or blood stains it is fine.

Discard that and do the same on the other side. Assuming that is OK too you can proceed (see picture 3).

Use your right hand for the udder nearest you and your left hand for the one furthest from you. If this is a novice milking goat or if you are milking for the first time, you may prefer to milk one side out at a time. Obviously this is going to be more time consuming but until your confidence grows (or the goats') you may find this easier.

How to do it!: The actual removal of milk from the udder should be easy. It is a knack -once learned is never forgotten. For the purposes of instruction, I am going to explain how to use one hand.

Put your four fingers together and lay around the teat. Gently but firmly, close your fingers around the teat to connect with your thumb and squeeze in a slightly downward motion. If nothing happens, just keep trying. You will feel a mild resistance in the teat and this will be the point where the milk is beginning to travel down the milk duct. The whole process is a psychological one as it is a reflex response in the goat which follows stimulation by the milker. This can even be a visual response on the part of the goat that recognises the routine. The reflex is transmitted in part by the nerves and partly by the release of the hormone oxytocin which acts on the alveoli of the udder which contain the bulk of the milk and squeezes the milk into the gland cistern Once you have achieved the goal once it will become easier ever time until you can milk the goat in just a few minutes.

The process of milking is simply pressure and release. As you release the pressure the cistern refills, as you apply pressure the milk exits through the teat. When I had vet students on my holding in Norfolk in order to help them with the handling and milking of dairy animals, I had a practice technique which involved getting a rubber glove and tying the thumb and all but the middle finger at the palm point with elastic bands. I then used to make a small pin prick on the end of the middle finger and fill the glove with warm water. Then tie up the top. Try "milking" the finger on the glove. The technique is similar!

So; assuming that you can now empty one side of the udder, progress to the second side.

Then, finally, use both hands together, one on each teat.

Cover your milking bucket and put to one side. Once you have dealt with the goat, get the milk to the house, strain and refrigerate it as soon as possible.

When you have finished, dry the udder with the last cloth and apply more udder cream to your hands and give the udder a good coating by gently massaging in.

You can now return the goat to her kids and they will finish off the job for you because your first few encounters will not necessarily empty the udder fully.

An average dairy goat should give you between three and four pints of milk every morning on this technique. The kids constant daytime feeding will stimulate her to produce plenty of milk.

She will need up to a kilogram of Dairy Mix a day on this regime in order to support what is a fairly high demand for milk. By the time the kids are four months old, they may not necessarily be taking everything the doe produces during the day, particularly if there is only one kid, so you may have to "strip out"

again in the evening.

I have only had one goat in 37 years of goat keeping who has ever needed this as milk is produced very much on a supply and demand basis.

Next time I will look at what to do with your milk supplies, how best to store it for future use, whether you should pasteurise and how to do it and when to use a milking machine.

9:33am Wednesday 16th May 2007

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