How To Milk A Stubborn Goat

How To Milk A Stubborn Goat


Back what now seems like ages ago, it was during my self-sufficiency natural earth-man phase, probably 15 years or so, I raised goats. Now you must know a couple of things about me, one is that I am a man of many interests, and the intensity of that interest is fairly fluid. When I discover a new interest I typically dive in headlong, no testing the water for me. I thought I needed goats to really truly connect to nature and continue the track to self-sufficiency.

My rationale well; principally milk, yogurt and their pellets for my compost operation. I was particularly proud of my compost pile, it was a large “living” thing nothing was quite as satisfactory at that time as getting up on a cold winter morning looking out my kitchen window and seeing steam rolling up from my compost bins.

But I digress, so I started with two females, beautiful Nubian goats, with their roman noses and large down turned ears, multicolored soft fur coats they truly were lovely animals. But for milk you need a billie goat, I picket one up at an auction a particularly ugly mixed breed with gray course bristly hair complete with beard, and respectable horns. In addition I also picked up two more females.

There is not fouler animal on this earth than a billie goat, single minded, stubborn and most of all they STINK. Their foul scent is a source of great pride to them, spraying their musk everywhere an rolling ecstatically in their own scent. But apparently the female were not so repulsed and soon I had kids, and most of all the whole point, my original goal; MILK.

In preparation I built built a milking stanchion perfect height for me to sit on a stool and access the goat for milking, it had a feed tray with a neck lock the goat would put her head through to eat I would close the lock keeping the goat in place to allow me to milk.

I had purchased the stainless steel milking bucket, utter wash, disinfectant, and utter balm, all the necessary gear my books suggested. I learned fairly quickly how to milk getting about a gallon a day with both morning and evening milking. We enjoyed the taste of fresh goat’s milk, much lighter and healthier than cows, Sharon made yogurt and all was good on the Glunt farmstead.

However I did have one particularly challenging goat she was not cooperative and as we progressed (in the milking relationship) she became increasingly difficult. She would with her head in the bracket casually eating her grain would kick, stomp and otherwise make herself difficult to milk. She ruined more than a few buckets of milk by stepping into the milk.

This battle of the wills went on for a while when she ultimately discovered a strategy that was difficult to overcome she would sit down, either contaminating the milk or knocking over the bucket.

At this point I became single mindedly focused on not being bested by a goat. After one particularly frustrating episode as she was sitting in the bucket I looked up to the heavens in frustration and as I looked that the barn rafters overhead I had a flash of insight.

I immediately set out to implement a plan I intuitively knew was shear genius, I dug through the various bens and shelves of the barn finding all the bits of equipment I would need. There were a couple screw eyes, a pulley, rope, a cleat and couple of leather straps etc.

I spent all that morning constructing my inspired device anxious to test it at that evenings milking.

So when I got my problem goat in the milking stanchion much to her surprise, I took to leather loops one for each hind leg attached to a rope hanging from a pulley above, taking up the slack I lifted her up just enough that her hooves were off the stand then tied the rope off in a cleat.

I believe it was the only time that she paused from eating the grain to look back as if to say “What the Hell?” Now it all worked perfectly, just as I had envisioned it was truly an inspired idea, one element I had not counted on was the natural configuration of the goats hind legs and the location of the rope, the size of the straps etc etc all resulted in the goats ending position by all appearances and supported by the affected goats calm demeanor to be a comfortable experience for both the goat and myself. In fact when the goat would try to sit her legs would level out and Eureka free unfettered access to the utter.

After about a week or two, with no further problems, no more spilt milk both the goat and I took this arrangement as mutually beneficial and gave it no second thought. I did not even consider the possibility of this contraption being even slightly humorous; it was to me extremely practical.

That is until my Uncle Wayne happened into the barn as I was milking. Uncle Wayne was quick witted with an easy laugh and boyish humor he never grew out of. When he stepped in and in the moment he saw he instantly broke out in uncontrolled laughter, the type of laughter that takes the breath and loose the tears. It was one of the few time I made my Uncle laugh so hard and the only time he did not have anything to say.

That’s how you milk a stubborn goat.

GWG