Tuesday, December 16, 2008

First day of milking...

Well, this morning I got up at 7:45 to go down and milk the goats at 8:00. I got Eric up and we went down with out metal milk-bowls and put the milk stand in the pen. Well, the three does who I was planning to milk didn't have any milk because their babies had already nursed this morning. Darn little things...

(The top two photos are of two of the does I will be milking. The bottom left photo has the other one - she is on the far right.)

Anyways, so I fed each of them on the milk stand so they would know that they are getting their food once they are on the stand. This is their first time to freshen (have kids and milk) so they weren't exactly sure what I was doing when I was trying to get them on the stand.

But I did successfully get each of them on the stand and fed them. The only problem was the two front legs of the stand broke off because she wanted out and couldn't get out. So, now I am going to have to go down there in the freezing cold weather and fix it.

I will be milking them in the A.M. and in the P.M. I am going for a 12 hour interval of time for each, so I milk them at 8am and again at 8pm. Only problem with that is, we feed and lock the goats and chickens up at 5:00-6:30pm because it's dark and cold. So I will have to go down there in the dark and milk them...

I am planning on making soaps, balms, and lotions with the milk. I am hoping all my efforts will be rewarding. I am thinking of trying my hand at making cheese too, but the fact that when Jocelyn tried it last time we were milking the goats, and it didn't work, is kind of daunting. Nevertheless, I am going to try my hand at it, and if I fail, then I will try again!

Other news about the goats - Dad is going to band the bucks tonight. There are three of them. They will be four months old tomorrow (born the 17th of August). We really need to band them because they are already acting like bucks. Yuck. So, hopefully, we won't have much trouble doing that tonight.

Hope you enjoyed hearing a bit about our goats! I'll keep you updated on them.

Love,
 Rachel

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