Dairy Goats:

These babies are about 5 weeks old and are being bottle fed with fresh goat milk, supplemented with goat milk replacer as needed.  They are totally tame and very friendly.  They are brother and sister, out of a pure LaMancha doe and a pure Nubian buck.   Both parents are good milking stock.

Doe:  $100.00

We call her Sandy.  She has the nubby ears that result from some LaMancha/Nubian crosses - some LaManchas have no ears at all!  She has been dehorned.

Buck: $50.00

He is a handsome fellow.  The kids didn't use much imagination when they named him "Billy", but feel free to choose your own name.  Although he and Sandy are two of three born to the same mama, Billy has the long Nubian ears, inherited from his father.  He has been dehorned.

Nigerian Dwarf Goats:

I am eliminating my small herd of Nigerian Dwarf goats.  They are good little hardy goats, great for pets and eating brush.  I have a beautiful buck, very docile, for $75.00, and several does for $50.00 each.  Some are very small.  These goats are not bottle fed, affectionate goats, but they have been handled alot and are not totally wild.  We interact with them on a daily basis.  If you are looking for goats to eat brush, these are an excellent choice.

I am not a full-time milkmaid, but I have the responsibility for three milkings a week for a small herd of three dairy goats.  One evening I captured the experience to share with the curious.

Here is Daisy, goat extraordinaire.   She looks rather unremarkable, but she milks like a cow (well, not quite, but almost)!  Her teats are huge and so easy to milk and she is giving slightly over a gallon a day of delicious milk.  She has one mission in life - convert sunshine to milk.  She eats leaves all day, and comes to stand by the barn door ready to milk.  Then she goes back out to the field and commences eating more leaves.  Good girl!

This is the business end.

And this is my and Daisy's business concluded for the evening.  She is officially off duty, and I take it from here.

Back in the kitchen, the milk is strained into clean (sanitized in the dishwasher) glass quart jars.  The strainer is stainless steel, and the filters are disposable Schwartz brand milk filters.

The milk is carefully poured into the jars.

It can take a few seconds for the milk to go through the filter.  You can see here some filled jars and one with the plastic lids that we use.  A blue sticker on the lid has a cryptic code, D 2 P, which means Daisy, March 2, evening milking (p as in pm).  Then into the fridge with all the milk.

The used strainer is examined for anything suspicious - what you see is probably bits of hay and a few hairs that have been filtered out.  This is normal detritus.  What you don't want to see is clots of milk/ blood/ mucus that might indicate mastitus, an infection in the udder, but if you see it here you can begin observation/treatment quickly.

Then the washing up - hot soapy water does the trick.  Everything is ready for morning, when we go again.