Milking Lilo

Lilo, my Nubian milker, enjoying some pasture.

Lilo and I are slowly getting into a rhythm with milking.  But it was a long first month.

When we started out, I would coax Lilo onto the milking stand with grain.  I would lock her head in the stanchion and then start to wash her udder.  She would immediately begin to kick.  First one foot, then the other.  Her feet would deftly come down on my wrist, effectively scraping me away from her udder.  She would finish with the most amazing front hand stand, as she would attempt to lift her entire rear end front my reach.  And this was just while cleaning her.

I took a piece of baling twine (thank God for baling twine!), made a slip knot, slipped it around her ankle, and then tied it to the leg of the stand.  This helped, but she would continue to kick...dropping her foot off the back of the stand or lifting the twine under my leg which hurt.

Once secured, I would slowly begin to milk.  I started by squirting a few times off the stand (not into the bucket).  This is because most of the bacteria you find will be in the first few squirts.  But I wasn't very adept at using my left hand, so the milk would more often than not go straight up my sleeve.  It was cold outside, but I would often concede and milk in short sleeves just to save my shirt.  For awhile I would milk single-handed, squirting with my right hand and holding the bucket with my left.  This gave me the ability to pull the bucket out from under Lilo at the first sign of kicking.

Well, Lilo figured out pretty quickly that she couldn't kick to get me to stop.  So she statred using other tactics.  I had begun to practice with both hands and as I would just get into a rhythm that actually got the milk into the bucket, Lilo would let out her belly like an old man after a big dinner and rest it on my arms.  Actually, she wouldn't just rest it, she would PUSH with her belly until my arms were so tired I had to stop.

This strategy went on for awhile.  The only thing I could do was stop milking, pull the bucket - because inevitably she would drop a bunch of dirt as she scraped her belly along my arms - and wait.  She would eventually go back to eating and I would start again.  She would let me milk a little, unsuccessfully kick, then drop the belly and I would stop.  I never let her decide when we were finished, though.  No matter what, I would always insist on being the one to stop milking...not the other way around.  I suspect that she was able to withhold some of her milk for the babies so to a certain extent she still had some say in the matter.

This pattern was getting pretty old.  Mind you, she had already gotten me out of bed at 6am and I wasn't particularly interested in being outside in the cold.  So I started to smack her butt when she would do this.  It wasn't very effective...but it made me feel a little better.  Realizing that I was probably never going to get her to stop, I began a quest to milk faster.  I worked hard at getting a quick, successful rhythm between teats.  Sometimes, I would feel the milk squeeze back into the udder as I milked (meaning I had not pinched off the teat), but more and more, the milk would release swiftly into the bucket in short steaming streams of white.  I learned to try to hit the side of the bucket, allowing the milk to slide into the pool instead of creating a foam on the top (sort of like pouring a beer into the side of a glass).  Eventually, I was able to finish milking Lilo before she was finished with her grain.

At the end of the milking, I would unlock Lilo and then quickly unlock the baby pen next to us.  All of the babies would file out.  Lilo would call to her two and I would lead them into the big pen...a goat parade at the crack of dawn.

Once everyone was out in the big pen, I would bring the milk inside, wash a filter, put it into the funnel and pour the fresh milk into a glass container.  Immediately, it would go into the back of the fridge to cool.  I would wash the bucket and funnel, hang up the bucket, and pour my coffee.