admin
Last week, one of our dear neighbors needed a week off to go north to be with her hubby who is a school principal in Altamonte. That’s about a 6 hour drive or so. They spend their summers here, and then the whole family goes north for the winter. With our awesome weather, their garden isn’t quite ready to leave for the winter, so Jill stayed behind to get things finished.
She asked if we would feed the goats, sheep, chickens, cats and dogs. Of course, we’d be happy to… and that meant learning how to milk the last two nanny goats. So, a week ago last Friday night we went to learn how to milk goats.
I’d milked a few cows as a kid, but I was much skinnier then, and the “old bones” weren’t as stiff either. Cindy got the hang of it right away, even she was only milking “one handed”. She preferred to hold onto the bucket with the other hand. As for Bev, well the flies were a problem so she declined on the milking task.
Here’s the really good news. All the milk went back to the animals. The cats and dog got several saucer-fulls. There were three orphan kids to feed, and they weren’t real shy about letting you know they were ready. Then the chickens got whatever was left.
In my opinion, the sanitation could have been better, but that would have added to the job. Because the animals got the milk, there was no washing or even rinsing of the buckets (plastic pails), bottles, or pans. This system works for this neighbor, as she has rarely ever had a sick animal as a result of lack of sanitation.
Feeding the goats was a challenge as the kids could get through the cattle panels with no problems. So here we are, pawing around a haystack, determining which flakes have no mold (a common problem with hay that’s a year old), and trying to throw it to the right place, while we have three or four kid goats “helping”. They were in our faces, on our backs and in general just really pesky.
The first night, I tackled the milking. Both goats know the routine by heart… Sure wish I did!. I got the first gal out and she climbed onto the primitive stanchion kinda’ sorta’ looking at me as if to say…”Hey stupid! Where’s my grain?”
I was getting it… just not fast enough. I barely got her collar hooked to keep her in place!
On to the task of milking. You probably imagine me (all 250 lbs of me) sitting on a little stool, just doing my thing. Well, instead of stool, it was a cinder block, not quite as high as a stool. Folding my legs under caused them to “go to sleep”… not good when you have to stand up. Finally, I stretched one leg to behind the goat, risking she’d back off the stanchion and and step on me. The other leg really had no where to go, but into kind of a “half crossed leg” position.
The wind was blowing about 20 mph, and the flies were still atrocious. Oh, and it was about 80 degrees!
I got enough milk to hand the bucket off to Cindy to get the first bottle filled. Oops, the wind blew the bottle over just as she was pouring… Someone’s gonna have a short dinner. We repeated this process a couple of times, getting just enough milk to feed two of the kids and the dog.
Second goat… named “Schizophrenic”… get the picture? Flies kinda freak her out, so I had still more spilled milk. Oh yes, and I wore plenty of it, too. Even the kids Cindy was feeding were wearing their milk as they pulled the nipple right off the bottle!
And this was just the first night… It was gonna be a long week.
Cindy’s experience wasn’t much better at first. But we all agreed, it was more sensible for her to milk, and for me to feed. Bev joined us after the first night and we split the chores. I’d head for the chickens to feed, water and collect the eggs, returning the eggs to the truck so we could take those to the house. Bev would head for the hay stack to feed the various goats and sheep. Cindy would immediately begin milking.
We’d trade off the watering depending upon who had how much to do when it came to getting hay distributed, etc. I pretty much handled feeding the three kid goats. Two of them always came to the fence for their bottles and a third one had to be “coaxed” from the hay. I hardly ever had to really try to catch her… she learned right away that I was “good news”.
By the end of the week, three of us could do what the neighbor does… ‘cept it took us three times as long.
| 3.2 |
