Life of a Milk Maid

Well it has been 11 days since I have picked up my milking goats, I have gone from just under 2.5 pints 1X a day to 4+ pints 2X a day. So I am up to about a gal a day! It has been a learning curve for me however, I started out feeding alfalfa pellets since there were no alfalfa in small bales to be found. However yesterday I was able to get some small alfalfa bales and wow what a difference in production and taste. The rest of the milk from the alfalfa pellets will be used to make soap. I will let you know how that goes, my yogurt was a flop but I will try that again soon. I am currently waiting ever so patiently for my order from Hoager supply to arrive today. It will have my milk pail with lid, a strainer, and all the stuff I need to make cheese as well as the udder care kit. I do have to stop at Bluestem today to get more half Gal jars and some more lids, I have milk coming out my ears!

Today when I took Annabell out to milk, I got her on the stand and started to milk, I heard a ruckus from Lacy in the stall and as I turned around she came bounding up to the milk stand, she managed to jump out! Of course this pisses Annabell off, she does not like to share her grain so I had a fight going on on the milk stand, I managed to grab the milk and save it then grabbed a rope and tied up Lacy till I was done with Annabelle. Wow that was exciting. I know what my next project will be, make the stall wall Higher! LOL

Goats, Goats, What to do with them??

Ok so now I am up to 12 goats and a really nice huge colored meat buck that will arive in June. Now where do I put them all? The 2 I am milking are kept in their own small pen and the others are mixed together in a bigger pen but still dryloted. I am tring to decide the best way to fence our pasture as well as our 3.5 acre lot. I think Ill use a mix of field fence, barbed wire around the top and a strand of hot wire around the inside middle. We can not however use our lot till July when the wheat gets harvested. But I think thats what we will fence for them first.

I am geting almost 2 quarts a day from my 2 dairy goats im milking, I have begune milking 2X a day in hopes to get back some of their milk production and its been working. I just orderd some supplies so I can make cheese and yogurt as well, cant wait for that to get here! I am going to atempt to make some yogurt later today from a store bought yogurt culture and I have a lot of frozen strawberrys that I froze severel months ago so Im hoping that will be good. Wish me luck!

Thats about all for today but Ill update with how the yogurt making goes.
I was looking today and it apears that one of my nubians is posibly just starting to get a bag, Ill look closer tomorrow storm was coming and I was tring to get chores done. Heres hoping for a baby!

First tast of raw goat milk!!! MMMM

Ok so its been a long weekend. Went to pick up the goats and drop off a horse. The had not been milked in a couple days so Of the 2 goats still milking I am getting about 1 quart a day. Not as much as I had hoped but I'm hoping they don't completely dry up. I had my first glass of raw goat milk this morning. last nights milking was cold and in the fridge when my FIL came by, I made him my guinea pig. He tasted it and said it was ok so I finally tried it...mmmm...was pretty good. Was thicker than store bought and had a slightly different taste than store bought cow milk but I totally expected that. can not wait to get a couple more does in milk, so I can make that cheese. Right now we will only be getting barely enough that we use for drinking and such.

Today we went to look at some myotonic goats, I like them allot but still up in the air if that's the kind of buck I want. If we were raising a pure bred breed I would say definatly say yes but since we will be breeding for the meat market I'm thinking a boer is in need here for fast growth and adding more meat to our dairy does. But money is tight right now and I can not afford either just yet. My husband that has never really understood my wanting to homestead ways is very into the goats so this is nice. He was even tyring to figure a way to buy the Boer mix that we really want to add muscle to our herd.

Here is some pics of the new goats enjoy....

And the 2 milking girls, a saanen and a Lamancha mix...

We also had some jumbo cotornix quail start hatching....

More Dairy goats coming soon!

Well I will be going back down to trade a mare for 5 dairy goats and 2 baby weathers this weekend. Now I ll be looking for a big meaty buck to cross on them to start my meat heard. 3 of the new does will be in milk so Ill get to start milking, making cheese and soaps and all sorts of good stuff. Will be looking for recipes soon. Will updating with pics as soon as they come home.

I do have a dilemma however. What kind of buck to get? I like the Tennessee Meat Goats but I also like the Boer crosses and I have my eye on a couple. But I do have awhile, I cant afford one right now anyway but I am drooling at various sites. Will update soon!