We’re floating in milk! We now have 3 dairy goats we’re milking – Tam was a pain to start with but is now our best milker! Handles good – tame – easy to milk… the best! Princes Leia is a Lamancha (the goat with no ears) and she’s small and skiddish. I thought she’s be tough to milk but she’s really settled into it and gives a decent amount of milk for her size. She’s better to handle than Willow – our first milk goat. Willow has been pretty good in the past, but her bag isn’t built well for hand milking I don’t think – milking her makes me tired – and she squats while you milk her… a little more difficult, but she does great with the milk.
Well – we get about 1 1/2 gallons in the morning and about 3/4 of a gallon in the evening – it varies, but at least two gallons a day – our freezers are already full of meet from the pigs and cow we butchered this spring – so every little nook and cranny is filled with a bottle of frozen milk. We’re not bottle feeding any babies right now either… so this is the land of milk – and if those bees keep busy – honey as well.
We looked into selling the milk – but you have to have a production kitchen and those aren’t cheap! You’re also opening yourself up to inspections – and we’re not ready for that, not to mention the fees. You even have some of that when selling milk for animal only use. So that’s all out. We could give or sell some to friends… but you know… that’s risky… because the spouse will be mad because the milk drinker wants a goat of their own now… Really… it is that good!
I was talking to John H. today and he sounded a little surprised at goat milk – there are lots of misconceptions about goats – but that doesn’t matter – there is always good and bad milk – and this is GOOD milk!
We have as surplus and we have to figure out how to deal with it. It takes half a gallon to make almost a 1/2 pound ball of soft cheese. We eat cheese – harder cheese from a cow normally – let’s try it and see if we can make a tasty batch of fresh homemade goat cheese!