Milk!

Update on Big Goat (I can't believe Jed named her that...)

Monday - Big Goat was skittish and didn't want to be near humans. Interacted fine with baby goats (which aren't really baby any more). Got home too late and was unable to milk... or get close. Left food out for her as she did not go into the pen where the baby goat's sleep.

Tuesday - Would meander into pen but still did not like getting near humans. Left food in the morning. After I got home form work Jed helped me catch her to see if we could milk her. (Background story - we got the goat from Jose - Naomi's step-dad but they were not sure when she was born, when she gave birth to her stillborn baby goat, nor how long it had been since she had any milk drained. She also had some scabs and healing wounds. ) Caught her but she was ubber swollen and very sensitive. She kicked but we were able to maneuver her. I was unable to get any milk out and she was just hurting. Jed dressed her wound while I held her by the horns. Left her more food and closed her up with the baby goats over night.

Wednesday - Morning - Fed her and had her get used to me being close. She's still a bit skittish. Evening - got home and was unable to get close to her. I saw our neighbor's dad, Don Jose, and I asked him if he had worked with goats before and if he would be able to give me a hand. He came over and noticed that she looked like if she had not been milked for a while. I caught her and he tried milking her. Her nipples had already started to get clogged up from undrained milk so he had to try a little harder but milk came out. The ducts were cleared and she gave a lot of milk. She did kick out a lot but we were able to get most of the milk. I ended up with 5.5 cups of milk. Note to self - acquire scale soon to measure produce and milk to keep track in log. Oh, and add cheese cloth to that too. She went back to eating and was walking a lot better. She's been playing with the baby goats. I think she was low goat on the totem pole and was thus not treated the best by the other goats. Hopefully she'll have a good time here.

After seeing that she'll need two people until she gets accustomed to being milked I was thinking about tying her up like we did with some of the cows who kicked when I was young. We would tie the rope to their horns and twist their heads back and then tied the rope to their back legs so that they would not kick nor thrash. This would allow me to milk her w/o another person. We'll see how it goes tomorrow morning... I can only hope that we got that much milk from her because she hadn't been milked in a while... it would be... slightly overwhelming if we ended up with that much milk every time we milked...

On a side note: I take Ramses in to be castrated next Friday. He was supposed to be castrated the 2nd or 3rd week of his life, but as we didn't have him then this will do. =) Poor little guy won't know what got him.