How to end milking season (sheep)

[ThoughtfulFox]

There must be a hundred different sites on the web explaining precisely how to begin your milking season, what equipment to have on hand, ideal methods and schedules and feeds.....but very few discuss how to go about ending your milking season.
We're currently coming to the end of our milking season, and I'm getting a number of conflicting opinions on how to go about this.
Some people say "just stop milking, unless the sheep are uncomfortable."
Others say "go to milking once a day, then once every two days, then once every three days, then stop".
Still others tell me "Milk half of their milk out, and let their bodies adjust to not making so much milk every day."
More advice is to take them off of their feed, or limit their feed, or change their feed.

So with all of these conflicting answers, I now seek advice from the herd.

 

[Cricket]

I'm not familiar with milking sheep, but I'd think it would depend on how full their bags are and how much they're producing. Where I work, we milk (cows) out thoroughly in the morning, then they're tied up and given the crappiest hay in the barn. It depends on how they're drying off when (or if) they're milked any more. I don't think I'd partially milk them out over days, but would skip milking (like only do a.m. milkings) if it were me. Think you'll just have to keep them close and see how they're doing and make sure they aren't getting really good feed or grain.

You must be ready to do a big happy dance! Good luck. Is your boss still talking about getting more sheep?

 

[bjjohns]

We have goats not sheep, but I would imagine the process is the same. We have one Alpine ending her milking season right now. First we determine how much bagging up (or milk production) the critter is doing. The alpine - Bambi- dropped from 1/2 gal to less than a quart. Ideally we would withhold water and feed for 24h, but in this heat that's impossible, so we withheld feed for 24, and watched her bag closely. She showed no ill effects so we let her back on feed. It's been 5 days now, and she doesn't look uncomfortable, and nothing else seems and issue, so we will move her from the dairy herd to the meat herd. The meat herd has our buck in it and is on rotational grazing. When she starts plumping up (as we will do for the other Alpine in that herd - Dakota) we will move them back up to the milk herd near the house. Hope this helps. We have 4 dairy goats, and this form of controlled breeding rotation seems to be working well for us.

 

[CochinBrahmaLover=)]

I dont understand yours Bjjohns, but Crickets sounds like it'd work.

Oh, and I totally want to steal your sig (yes thats why I posted .... )

 

[bjjohns]

I dont understand yours Bjjohns, but Crickets sounds like it'd work.

Oh, and I totally want to steal your sig (yes thats why I posted .... )

I tried, wish I knew where my description broke down. I liked THoughtFox's sig too, had to stop laughing to post. BTW i've decided to tell non farm folks I milk my chickens and get the eggs from the goats.

 

[CochinBrahmaLover=)]

I dont understand yours Bjjohns, but Crickets sounds like it'd work.

Oh, and I totally want to steal your sig (yes thats why I posted .... )

I tried, wish I knew where my description broke down. I liked THoughtFox's sig too, had to stop laughing to post. BTW i've decided to tell non farm folks I milk my chickens and get the eggs from the goats.

Lol, what threw me off is where you mentioned Bambi xD

LOL!! Man, next time that annoying girl comes over... I have quail now! Imagine what I could tell her....

"Ya, I milk the quail, so? And the chickens give me wool, yeesh. And the goats lay eggs and I can pluck them for their feathers "

 

[bjjohns]

I dont understand yours Bjjohns, but Crickets sounds like it'd work.

Oh, and I totally want to steal your sig (yes thats why I posted .... )

I tried, wish I knew where my description broke down. I liked THoughtFox's sig too, had to stop laughing to post. BTW i've decided to tell non farm folks I milk my chickens and get the eggs from the goats.

Lol, what threw me off is where you mentioned Bambi xD

LOL!! Man, next time that annoying girl comes over... I have quail now! Imagine what I could tell her....

"Ya, I milk the quail, so? And the chickens give me wool, yeesh. And the goats lay eggs and I can pluck them for their feathers "

I tried to fix it, thanks. So like what, we pluck the cheese from out goats? (that sounds somewhat disturbing)

 

[CochinBrahmaLover=)]

I tried, wish I knew where my description broke down. I liked THoughtFox's sig too, had to stop laughing to post. BTW i've decided to tell non farm folks I milk my chickens and get the eggs from the goats.

Lol, what threw me off is where you mentioned Bambi xD

LOL!! Man, next time that annoying girl comes over... I have quail now! Imagine what I could tell her....

"Ya, I milk the quail, so? And the chickens give me wool, yeesh. And the goats lay eggs and I can pluck them for their feathers "

I tried to fix it, thanks. So like what, we pluck the cheese from out goats? (that sounds somewhat disturbing)

0_0 That does sound disturbing.....

 

[ThoughtfulFox]

Cricket, bjjohns, CochinBrahmaLover,
Thank you all for your advice.
We've been butting heads here as to what method to use, but somehow in all the indecisiveness the sheep seem to be drying up pretty well. I've been withholding their usual alfalfa pellets from them for about a week, now. For two days I barely milked them at all, and when I did it was once a day. Now we're back to 100% milking, but their mammary glands all seem to be shrinking. (thankfully) Two of the ewes are giving less than half of the milk that they used to. One is still producing like a champ...how one little sheep can create three quarts of milk in a day on nothing but grass and water is beyond me....but she seems to be slowing down ever so slightly.

*chuckle* The signature comes from a conversation that my cousin and I had on facebook. I don't know if she was quoting something with her carrot tree portion, but I had to chime in with the rest.
Speaking of which....there are some seriously gullible people in the world.

It's become sort of an inside joke among our friends.

Feel free to repost it anywhere you want.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

You already stopped feeding alfalfa pellets, so that's great. I recommend stopping milking cold turkey. The udder will get full, and it needs to in order for the body to get the signal to stop producing milk. Studies show the udder needs to be full for at least 5 days for the body to finally get the hint to stop producing. I wean lambs cold turkey, and have never had any issues. With my dairy goat, I'll stop milking for 5 days, then milk her out on the 6th day to make sure there are no signs of mastitis. I make sure to re-dip the teats well and then leave her be. On the dairy farms where I've worked, we just dried off the cows cold turkey. Some farms did a dry cow treatment (like Tomorrow), and others did nothing. No problems.