Preparing goats milk for human consumpsion

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I have only been keeping boar goats for 12 months but I would like to milk some does for our own consumption. My mother told me many years ago that goats milk was heathier for you than other types of milk and lacking modern appliances she just milked and keep it cool. So if the goats are wormed and witholding periods observered is it best to just heat it in a microwave and refrigerate ?

-- Ray Grech (rayg303@aol.com), July 31, 2002

Answers

After the goat has been milked (if the milk gets dirty throw it out), strain the milk with a milk filter and a funnel into a glass jar. Then cool it in an ice water bath and put it into the fridge after half an hour of the ice water. If the goats are healthy and the milk is clean you shouldn't need to pasteurize it. Raw milk will keep for about a week if cooled as described. It does not keep as long a store milk, so drink it fresh! Or you can strain it and then freeze whatever you cannot use in four or five days.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), July 31, 2002.

Pasturizing isn't difficult if you don't want to drink raw milk or have children under two who are going to be drinking it. Strain the fresh milk into a double boiler ( a pot set into another pot of boiling water). Heat the milk to 165 degrees and hold at that temperature for 30 seconds. Pour into glass jars and do the ice water bath as described in the other post. It only takes a minute or two to do. What you are trying to do is heat the milk quickly to a high enough tempurature to kill any bacteria but not scorch the milk. Then you want to cool it quickly to 40 degrees so no new bacteria can grow in it.

-- Kristine Taylor (kristylr@pacbell.net), August 01, 2002.

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