Raising Goats Naturally

by Deborah Niemann

  Is this a reason not to dam raise? In my experience, if we start milking a doe early in her lactation, this is rarely an issue. Also, as goats become more experienced milkers, we are able to completely empty their udders. This is also why I don’t sell a doe in milk to someone who is inexperienced milker unless they also buy one of the doe’s kids. I’ve seen too many people trying to learn to milk and not getting the udder empty. Combine poor milking technique with a poor milk ejection reflex, and a doe’s production will decrease. If the doe has a kid, that kid will keep up the milk supply while the new owner learns to milk.

  Milking Equipment

  You will need the following items whether you will be milking by hand or with a machine. All of these things can be purchased through goat supply companies, but in some cases, you can make your own or come up with creative substitutes that cost less.

  Milk Stand

  Don’t skip this one! Someone once bought a perfectly trained milk goat from me and then complained that she was having problems milking the doe. After a discussion, I realized the woman did not have a milk stand. There are a few sweet goats in this world that will let you milk them anywhere, but you need to use a milk stand for most goats, especially if you are a beginner. Trying to milk without a stanchion will lead to fighting with the doe, which sets you up for failure when you do put her on a milk stand because she’s had a negative experience with milking. Goats have great memories, so you want to start out right.

  You can buy a fancy metal milk stand, or you can make a wooden one using scrap wood you find around your farm. Commercially made metal milk stands are nice because the deck is metal mesh, so when you spill milk on it (and you will spill milk), the milk stand doesn’t become slippery. Wooden milk stands get very slippery when they’re wet. The big difference between the two, of course, is price. A professionally made metal one is a few hundred dollars, whereas you can make one for a fraction of that price or even free if you have some spare wood.

  We made this milk stand from scrap wood and are still using it 16 years later. There are a multitude of designs for milk stands, but they all have a place for a feed pan and a way to hold the goat’s head in place so that she can’t decide to leave when she’s done eating. After a couple of years milking in an open barn, we built a milking parlor to keep our equipment cleaner and more organized. The milking parlor is also heated so we humans are more comfortable milking through the winter.

  The height of the milk stand is important. It should be short enough for the goat to jump up on it but high enough for you to sit comfortably next to it and milk the goat. Commercial milking parlors usually have very high milking stands, which goats can access by walking up a ramp, and the humans stand behind the does to connect the inflations from the milking machine. If you have back problems, the latter option is probably the better one.

  Milk Bucket

  The bucket should be stainless steel and seamless for ease of cleaning. You don’t want any cracks or seams in the bucket where bacteria can hide. A six-quart bucket works well for most standard goats, but you’ll want a shorter one for Nigerians. Milking machines do not get the udder completely milked out, so a milk bucket is still needed for hand milking to empty the udder.

  Strip Cup

  An official strip cup is a stainless steel container with a wire mesh filter that sits on the top. The filter alerts you to chunky milk (a symptom of mastitis) before you start milking. However, you can use a repurposed tin can or an old coffee cup. The strip cup is used to collect the first few squirts of milk from each teat. Research has shown that the first squirts contain a larger amount of bacteria. We give this milk to the barn cats after milking.

  Udder Supplies

  You can buy disposable udder wipes or baby wipes for cleaning the udder. Some people use a bucket of warm, soapy water and actually wash the udder. We simply use a warm washcloth. Whatever cloth or wipe you decide to use, a clean one must be used for each doe so that you don’t spread germs.

  Teat Dip

  Iodine is used in organic dairies to dip teats, but there are also chemical teat dips and sprays available. If you use a dip, you’ll need something to hold it in. Old-fashioned film canisters or prescription pill bottles work well. If you will be letting the does out to be with their kids after milking, you don’t have to use a teat dip because the kids will be nursing through the day. The purpose of the teat dip is to sanitize the end of the teat as it closes up during the 15 or 20 minutes following milking. This doesn’t happen when a doe is nursing kids because kids nurse so often. The frequent nursing reduces the risk for infection as it keeps milk flowing out of the teat, which continually flushes out bacteria.

  Milk Filters

  Goat hair and dust will inevitably wind up in your milk bucket, so you’ll want to filter the milk before storing it. Filters are disposable. Cheesecloth stretched over the top of the bucket while milking also works as a filter, but you’ll need to wash and boil the cheesecloth between uses to keep it sanitary.

  Storage Containers

  You probably already have plenty of things in your house to use for milk storage, such as a pitcher with a lid or canning jars with plastic lids. We also use carafes and old-fashioned milk bottles and cover the tops with aluminum foil. If you don’t cover the container, the milk will develop an off taste and a dry film on the top.

  Milking by Hand

  If you have only a few goats, you might be able to milk by hand. My arms are burning by the time I finish milking one standard-sized goat or about five Nigerians, but my youngest daughter has milked as many as nineteen Nigerians and two LaManchas by hand, so ability varies tremendously among individuals. If you have health issues like carpal tunnel syndrome or arthritis in your hands, you should probably look into getting a milking machine.

  When a doe has long teats, the milking method uses four fingers: the index finger wraps around the top of the teat and squeezes, then the middle finger wraps and squeezes, then the ring finger, and finally the little finger. If nothing comes out after doing this several times, you may not be squeezing hard enough. If you feel the teat get smaller as you squeeze, but nothing comes out, you are not trapping the milk in the teat, and it is going back up into the udder. When a doe doesn’t have long teats, you may not be able to use all four fingers, and if she has really short teats, you may simply need to roll your thumb against the teat (from the udder down) while pressing it against your index finger. Gently massaging the udder and placing a warm cloth on the udder will help the goat let down her milk. Some people bump the bottom of the udder like kids, although definitely not as hard as kids do.

  Milking a goat by hand involves trapping the milk in the teat and then squeezing the teat so that the milk squirts out.

  Keeping a doe happy on the milk stand usually means giving her grain or other feed. When you are learning to milk, it is easy to overfeed grain, resulting in the doe developing diarrhea in the short term and becoming obese in the long term. To avoid these problems, you can mix alfalfa pellets into the grain ration. I do this with some of my does that are especially fast eaters.

  When a doe does not have kids nursing, you need to be sure to empty the udder. Toward the end of milking, as the squirts of milk get smaller, a gentle massage of the udder usually produces a little more milk. If you don’t empty the udder at each milking, production will gradually go down. This is why I recommend that people who are new to milking goats milk a doe that has at least one kid still nursing. If milking by hand doesn’t empty the udder, the nursing kid will.

  Milking with a Machine

  There are a variety of electric milking machines and manual milkers on the market, varying in cost from a hundred dollars to a thousand or more. The less expensive machines are manually operated and milk only one teat at a time, so they are not really practical if you have more than a couple of goats. Electric milking machines milk both teats at the same time and can be configured to milk multiple goats if you have a large herd.

  There
are a few things that are always important when using a machine. Sanitation cannot be ignored. Unless you are a really slow hand milker a milking machine doesn’t save time because of the cleanup involved. All the pieces of the machine that came in contact with milk need to be disassembled and thoroughly washed and sanitized after every milking. The tubes and inflations must be cleaned with a special brush, which is usually available from the companies that sell milking machines.

  You may have at least one doe that produces milk faster than it can flow through the tubes, which means that the milk will be pooling around her teats. Unless she is the first goat to be milked, her teat orifices are now being exposed to germs from every goat that was milked before her. If you’re milking with a machine, you want the doe’s teats to be as clean as possible when you put the inflations on them to avoid cross-contamination between does. A pre-milking teat dip will help prevent infection.

  The doe must let down her milk before you put the inflations on the teats, so put a few squirts into a strip cup after cleaning the udder and dipping the teats. Some goats are more easily milked by machine than others, even if you have manually removed a few squirts. Massaging the udder a little after connecting the inflations will help get the milk flowing.

  If the inflations are properly placed on the teats, they will stay on without your holding them. The first time you use a milking machine on a doe, she may be apprehensive, but if she is extremely upset, you may be doing something wrong. Your machine should come with information about the correct pressure of the vacuum. If it is nonelectric, you need to create a suck-release rhythm that mimics a kid nursing. Never pump up the pressure and hold it! When the stream of milk starts to slow down, you can massage the udder gently to get a little more milk before turning off the machine and stripping the last bit of milk by hand to empty the udder.

  A milking machine with clear inflations is nice so that you can be sure the teat is correctly placed in the inflation.

  Handling Milk

  One of the first decisions you have to make when you have your own dairy animals is whether to consume the milk raw or pasteurized. Although some people are purists on one side or the other, using only raw or pasteurized for everything, we’ve decided to use both. We choose whichever form yields the best quality in the final product. When we find no difference in quality, we use raw. There are convincing arguments on the raw versus pasteurized debate, and as I’ve said with other decisions you’ll have to make, you should do whatever helps you to sleep at night.

  The cleaner the milk is, the better it will taste. When we started milking our first goat, sometimes the milk tasted great, and sometimes it tasted goaty. I tried everything that I’d read, such as rapidly cooling the milk by putting it in a jar in an ice water bath, but nothing seemed to work consistently. It was very frustrating because it meant that our yogurt and cheeses were often unpalatable. When I first started milking, however, I would just stick a bucket under the goat and start milking. After a few months, I heard that one should clean the udder, so I started using a washcloth to wipe off the teats and udder. After a few years, I read that there were bacteria in the opening of the teat and that the first few squirts of milk should be put into another container, so we started using a strip cup. Although the bacteria are harmless, they do affect taste. Pasteurization does not help because that simply kills the bacteria, but it is still in the milk, and it cannot be filtered out. I eventually learned that nothing can make up for starting with unclean milk.

  The other important point is that when you are consuming the milk, you should have healthy animals, regardless of whether you plan to pasteurize. Although pasteurization should kill most pathogens, there is some controversy over whether it kills Johne’s. CAE is not thought to infect humans, but there is the caveat that more research is needed in this area. And as already discussed, we do know that listeria, tuberculosis, and brucellosis infect humans through raw milk.

  Storing Milk

  Milk should be filtered, chilled as soon as possible, and kept refrigerated until ready to use. When hand milking, I prefer to filter the milk as I milk each goat, but one of my daughters brings all of the milk into the house at once and filters it then, and we have not seen a difference in the quality of the milk. When I use the milking machine, it is simpler to strain the milk after bringing it into the kitchen.

  There are official storage times for pasteurized milk, but storage time for raw milk is variable. Raw milk does not “sour” under refrigeration like pasteurized milk, but storage time is more complex than that. After a few years of consuming our own fresh milk, I’ve started to notice a taste difference after about three days. The taste starts to remind me of store-bought milk, so we try to do something with the milk before it reaches that point. Any hint of goatiness early on intensifies with each passing day. The quality also goes down for cheese making as milk gets older. Flocculation will occur faster, and if the milk is too old, it may not be possible to get a decent curd. Once milk gets to be four or five days old in our refrigerator, I freeze it for making soap or feed it to the pigs.

  PART III

  Milk, Meat, and More

  Today our goats provide us with more than a dozen different types of cheese, and other dairy products, as well as meat, fertilizer, and leather. They feed us with their milk and meat, and they also feed our pigs and poultry with the whey from the cheese that we make, and the pigs and poultry eventually feed us also. The goats fertilize the pastures where they graze, and our garden and fruit trees, which eventually provide food for us, benefit from composted goat manure. Without the goats, we would have to buy far more of our own food, as well as fertilizer. After having goats for only a few years, it occurred to me that they were truly the centerpiece of our diversified homestead.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE DAIRY KITCHEN

  When I brought home my first goats, I had no idea that I could make anything with the milk other than chèvre, but it didn’t take me long to discover yogurt and many other cheeses, and I fell in love with the milk, the cheese, and the goats. When friends tried my chèvre, they started asking if they could buy it, so I called the state Department of Agriculture to ask what I needed to do to legally sell cheese in my state. The department representative started giving me a long list of requirements, and the dollar signs started adding up in my head. I explained that I was milking only two goats, but the representative said that everyone in Illinois should have access to safe food, regardless of where they bought it.

  I quickly realized that I would have to sell a lot of cheese to recover the investment of more than $100,000 to build a certified kitchen and become a licensed dairy, and then I’d have all the associated costs of running a business. And as much as I love my goat cheese, did I really want to make large amounts of cheese every day? Instead of developing a commercial dairy, I decided to learn to make every cheese and dairy product that our family uses. Because we are serious cheese lovers, I figured we could save a few dollars along the way. We have been making 100 percent of our cheese for more than 10 years now, and we have made 19 different types of cheese and counting.

  When people hear about how much cheese we make, they find it hard to believe that we are not selling it, but I am quick to point out that aged cheese lasts forever. In 2012 a cheese shop in Wisconsin decided to close its doors and found cheddars in the cooler that were 28, 34, and 40 years old! Not only were the cheeses still edible, they received rave reviews. So, while it is still a good idea to contribute to a financial retirement account, we are also building up our store of aged cheeses. And because a traditional cheese cave does not need electricity, storing cheese in one is a sustainable method of food preservation.

  One of the first questions I am asked about our cheese making is, “Is it hard?” Answering that question is a lot like answering the question, “Is it hard to play the piano?” It is called artisanal cheese making because it truly is an art. It is quite easy to learn the basics. Just as you can stop your musical educatio
n at any point and keep playing the same songs, you can also decide that you’re happy with whatever cheeses you’ve mastered and stick with those forever. Or you can keep learning for the rest of your life. There are several hundred cheeses in the world to discover and master making, and you can even create your own unique cheeses.

  Equipment

  You may already have much of the equipment that you will need to make cheese and fermented dairy products. The specialized equipment can easily be found with online suppliers that cater to the home cheese maker.

  Pots: Most sets of pots and pans have at least a five-quart Dutch oven, which will be large enough to make a batch of cheese with a gallon of milk. If you don’t already have a nine-quart pot or slightly larger, you may need to buy one for making the hard cheese recipes in this book, which call for two gallons of milk. Many traditional methods of making cheese use a water bath, which you can make by suspending a smaller pot in a larger pot that contains water that is at the same level as the milk in the suspended pot. Indirect heating is the goal, and to create it, the smaller pot cannot rest on the bottom of the outside pot. This is not the same thing as a double boiler, where a pot sits above boiling water.