Belle

My family has had dairy goats since 2010.  We started out with Nigerian Dwarf goats because of their small size and the high butterfat content in their milk.  Three years later, some friends blessed me with a lovely six-week old Lamancha doe which we soon named Belle.  Belle is such a sweet doe with a perfect temperament and now that she is lactating, she is all the more such a wonderful blessing with her delicious milk.

Belle kidded her first time with a single buck, Graham, in June 2014.

I milked her for about a year and a half, dried her up during the winter, and she freshened in March 2016 with twin bucks, Matzo and Seder.  I started milking her every morning in May.  Her boys, ever growing, get to be with her for the rest of the day till lock up.

To begin milking, I get her a full bucket of feed (you want to let them eat as much as they are able to while you are milking.  I like to let her have the whole bucket because she puts a lot into her milk).   Then I latch her on the stand and fetch my milking supplies all the while keeping her in sight.  One thing you never want to do is tie a goat up unattended; they can get themselves in the most precarious situations, escape, or choke themselves, sometimes causing death.

I then use one soapy wash cloth to thoroughly clean her udder and teats. Then I strip her milk, that is squeeze milk out of each teat to get rid of any bacteria or buildup in those first few squirts of milk.

Finally, I milk her.  Belle’s udder is nice and soft with nice open orifices making her a super easy goat to milk.

In addition, what you see in her udder size is mostly milk.  I’ve had some does with promising udders only turn out to be all fluff, with little milk and mostly tissue making up the udder.  This photo is before milking:

And this is after milking:

Once finished, I clean Belle’s udder and teats, then take her back to her pen with the rest of her feed.  Inside, I filter the milk, put it in jars, mark down what she gave and the time I milked, and put it in the fridge.  Today, she gave me one half gallon of milk after eleven hours since her boys last nursed her.

Good girl Belle!