How to Milk a Goat

Milking Routine:

At the beginning of our milking season, we do a sanitary clip on our girls (normally this is done before kidding begins).

We milk our girls twice a day both AM and PM, we aim for 12 hours between the milkings.

To begin milking we give our doe her goat ration, give her a rough brush, then use warm water which we bring out in this pail and a clean cloth to wipe the udder and surrounding area. Then we spray a homemade teat wash on the udder and wipe that off with a clean cloth dipped in the warm water. 

Our homemade teat spray is in a spray bottle we combine 20 drops of lavender essential oil, 10 drops of tea tree essential oil, and 2 tbsp of soap, then we fill the rest of the bottle with water. Shake it up before each use. 

Then we strip the goat into a little cup similar to this one, or milk each teat once to clean out the plug and any bacteria. We do this in a little cup just to examine the milk to look for signs of problems such as mastitis. 

Then we milk the goat out by hand into a pail. Sometimes we have to bump the goats to ensure we get all of their milk to letdown. 

Once fully milked, we strain the milk into jars (These are our favorite jars - these, these, and these), and quickly put the jars on ice, and get them to the freezer to cool down as quickly as possible. 

After we finish milking we wipe the udder down again with our homemade teat spray and a clean cloth.