Fifty Minutes. 50. I just don't see how one person can milk 4 goats in less time, unless I didn't care about measuring and recording each girls' daily contribution. From the time I prepared the treats to putting the jarred milk in the fridge, it was 50 minutes. However, if one considers the VALUE of the quantity of milk, it's a very worthwhile endeavor. A quart of goat milk retails for $3.69 around here. I get a minimum of 3 quarts just from the 2 Alpines, so that's $11.07, and they're done in 25 minutes. That's over $26/hr I'm "earning" for milking those goats! We won't even go into the cost/value of raw goat cheese at $24 per pound.
The other thing I wanted to mention is I've repeated the outcome of thick, creamy yogurt with Nubian milk. Today we're going to reinforce the fence around the backyard and send the doelings there to wean them and HOPEFULLY get more than 12 oz of milk from 2 goats.
I bet you will be surprised just how much milk they are still drinking! My old Nubian Dym I placed in a wonderful pet home because she was so hard to milk. Some days it would take 45 minutes just to milk HER! (Huge teats and tiny orifices) Talk about a wrist killer! I could milk her daughter or the other goats in only about 10 minutes or less. I don't think that is bad time at all for getting the milk put up and everything. Got to figure in the time to drive to the grocery store too! :)
ReplyDeleteI do hope I'm surprised! When one of the whethers finally went to freezer camp (borrowed phrase from an online friend) his mom started giving close to 3 quarts at one milking, where she'd been giving about 1. She has since tapered off, but we don't use as much milk as we get from the Alpines. Our Nubians have very small teats, so it's a thumb and index finger job. Hope those grow with their second freshening!
ReplyDeleteLOL It just got to where I couldn't even milk that one doe anymore. It was too painful, so I think I went way too far the other way with the new Nubian. We bought a doeling and I made sure and asked the breeder that her dam did not have those big teats and she said no, hers was on the small side. I was looking at this doeling the other day and noticed hers (of course she hasn't come in milk yet) are smaller than a lot of the Boer goats teats! I think I may have went from one extreme to the other! LOL.
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