Oh, She's Talking About Goats Again: Milking A First Time Freshener

   New territory for us as goat keepers is raising a doe from a kid to a first time freshener. The goat in question is our "cow" Millie. She is half Alpine and Nubian. She has complete Alpine characteristics- a fearless bully, and she has horns. Her voice and loppy ears are the only apparent Nubian qualities. I thought we should take her to market but since she was bred we decided to see what kind of mother and milker she might turn into.

  Millie's first time kidding went fast and great, two baby does. As a mother right away she mellowed out and calmed down, and it helped too that we were right there as she gave birth, the entire family milling around, in and out of the barn. She actually tended to her babies instead of running to the feed pan to have first choice.

  A few days after I got her up into the milking stand to see if I could milk her, her utter looked nice and full. But her teats were so tiny I gave up. It was discouraging to think we had put up with this "cow" for this long just to have to get rid of her now. I got on line to see if I could see anything on the internet on FF (first-time fresheners). 

   I prefer to let the mothers nurse their babies. Dame raised babies are more content and grow faster than bottle fed babies. Millie was bottle fed and seemed to have a greedy nature, I wasn't sure if that was her personality or was she just always hungry, watching our babies now, they nurse all day, in little sips, maybe she was hungry only being fed 4 times a day. True the kids aren't as friendly, but we do handle them a lot and hand feed them treats. Also it cuts down on my stress of another mouth to think of feeding!

  So what I have learned is that as a rule FF do have tiny teats that grow and stretch, and with proper care they can develop fine milking teats.  The procedure we decided to follow goes like this:

   At night (at night because the time is spent mostly sleeping anyhow) we separate the babies from their mothers ( I used a dog cage for this so that the does could still smell them and clean them through the night). Then in the morning the does' utter has filled and stretched. The pressure also allows the the teats to lengthen gently. On the milking stand I milk them all the way out. I have been doing this for a week now and every day notice an improvement. I'm getting good goat milk and the baby goats are getting all they want too.