Someday I would like to have a kitchen type dairy room with hot and cold water off the goat shed but for now I am hauling so much stuff to my milking area. -a bucket of warm water to wash udders, drying towels for each girl, a milk jug to milk into and a larger tote to pour each milking into, the teat dip etc. I don't want to leave milking items in the shed, but I look like I'm moving in twice a day! I don't want to sound whiney since we are loving the milk,but any tips on streamlining? Now I am proud of the taste of my milk -no off flavors etc, however, I have been trying to make a "goaty" flavoured chevre like I have purchased at the store and mine seems to taste so bland. Any tips on getting more flavour into the cheese? I have tried buttermilk as a starter and also yogurt, and use a liquid rennet but follow directions from Fankhauser's cheese pages.

-- Terri in NS (terri@softkits.com), May 03, 2002

Answers

I use wetones for clean up before, and a horse spray bottle of water with some bleach in it for post spraying after milking. Rarely would my girls need their whole udder washed, maybe once a day someone may need another wetone used to clean a dirty rear udder. I carry 2 totes, the lambar full of milk, to and from and 4 lambars a day! I have a cement floor, double commercial sink with drain board, where I do all my cleaning, problem comes in, if you do pasturise your milk out in the milk room, unless you have a spare fridge (20$ a month in electricity for an older model) you still have to tote house milk back to the house, and for me, kids milk. I know folks who feed spoiled milk to their kids, (very successfully) even adding some buttermilk culture to it, because their milk sits out in the barn all day. Morning milking for lunch and night bottles, night milkings for morning bottles. How do the rest of you deal with this? Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), May 03, 2002.

I use wet ones ttoo. I am milking four does right now, but one still has a buckling on her, and the other isn't producing too much. I have my freezer in the barn so I milk and then set it in the freezer and finish chores then go to the house and strain and all. I sweep the floor twice per day and in the summer there is no bedding in the barn and they lay on the concrete a lot of the time even tho I do have two wooden beds. Guess they don't like the idea of being so close o each other! I keep a shelf on the wall in front of the milk stand where I have a paper towel rack and trimmers, fly spray, bleach water spray, a stronger bleach water two litre bottle for cleaning up the milk stand and various other sundry goatee things. The shelf is a great help when there is any trouble at all. When I have kids here I pasteurize the morning milk and feed that evening, etc. I store all milk in the fridge in the house.Knocking on wood, I haven't had scours or any diarrhea in a kid since my first kid which I fed with milk replacer.

-- Doreen (animalwaitress@yahoo.com), May 03, 2002.

Ah, streamlining....There really isn't a right or wrong way to do it. Every person has a different set-up or requirements and that dictates how things will be done. But we can still dream.

I use diaper wipes and keep them in the barn. I try to milk a couple of does into the wintertime, so the wipes have to come back & forth to the house with me or they'll be a frozen brick, but right now they're under the milk stand where they're handy. Along with the bottle of teat spray. I keep these in a bucket so I can grab the whole thing at once.

We are lucky to have a 'summer kitchen' on the back of our house, with a fridge, stove and sink, so all the milking equipment stays there and not in the main kitchen. Also in the summer kitchen is a set of metal shelves where all the misc goat stuff goes. Everything from meds, books, kettles, collars, etc. I only have one cabinet in the barn and it can only hold so much stuff, so the rest goes into the house.

When milking, I have a small stainless steel bucket that I milk into and a larger SS one with a cover to pour all the milk into and haul that one into the house to process. After pasteurizing, I carry the full lambar out to the barn twice each day.

If I have milk coming out my ears, the excess goes to the chicken coop. We have really hard egg shells.

-- Charleen with Obies in WNY (harperhillfarm@yahoo.com), May 09, 2002.