Once-a-day milking
I decided to go for it and cut back to once-a-day milking. After all, the days are getting shorter all the time, and I'd really rather not end up milking in the dark.
The first night, I felt so strange, not having a goat to milk. And production did drop, from 22.6 ounces per day to 18.3 ounces per day (a 19% reduction).
On the other hand, it
doesn't look like changing over to once-a-day milking is going to
increase the rate of decline. In other words, we're now getting a bit
more than a pint of milk per day, and the amount seems to be staying
pretty steady.
What about once-a-day
milking from the goat's point of view? Abigail doesn't actually seem to
mind. She's got plenty of room in her udder at this stage in the game,
and twenty-four hours of milk in September is less than twelve hours of
milk in May. So, no, she doesn't appear to be in any discomfort at all.
"Are we done talking about milk yet?" Artemesia asks. "Can't we go play?"
Yes, you're right, little goat. Skipping the evening milking does mean I have more time to watch you graze after supper. Let's go play!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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