PasturePassion
Exploring the pasture
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2014
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I have a wonderful doe (3 actually), but this one in particular is becoming increasingly difficult to milk. This is her first lactation, and she is probably about 7 weeks in. She is very patient on the stanchion, but even with 5 kid goats and myself working at it, it takes about 30-45 minutes to get her emptied out. When she first kidded, I just made sure she was milked out in the morning, and left her with her doeling for the rest of the day. However, she was always a little hard and I had various goat kids help me out, which they were always willing to do. After a few weeks though, we noticed that her doeling wasn't nursing evenly, so made sure she was emptied out twice a day. But it is getting so difficult that no one wants to try to suckle. The kids would all rather go have hay, and no matter how I try I can get milk out of only one teat and that is painfully slow. I've been milking for years, and her teats are reasonably large. Also, my husband has been working on a milking machine that works great on the other goats, but can't get a drop out of this one. We did have a mishap with our buck, and both she and her sister were bred at about 6 months of age, but except for this one issue they are doing very well. Her udder is not hard or lumpy or hot or anything like that, and she has a wonderful personality and makes tons of milk. I just can't get it out!