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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] raising your own milk

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  • From: "Gwen Giffen" <ggiffen@1st.net>
  • To: <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] raising your own milk
  • Date: Tue, 4 Apr 2006 09:35:14 -0400

My husband and I got a good laugh off of that Okie story, Jim. He has spent the last month building fence. We recently traded 6 sheep for 2 rolls of woven wire on the OhioFarmBarter group. We could've gotten a lot more for the sheep, but we needed the wire fast, and didn't have the money right now to buy it. We wanted to cut down on shearing just for this year (shearing is difficult when one is with child - a balance issue), and I didn't want my prime spinning ewes to go to the sale barn, so it worked for us. We kept the nicest spinners with lamb.

Now, our sheep are getting out worse than our goats right now. It used to be the sheep stayed in and the goats got out. But they trade off. We have mixed browser breeds of longwools though, so maybe that's the problem. Also the goats recently kidded. By fall, they will be back to their antics. Consequently, we could milk the sheep too if we wanted to. In my experience, a noisy animal is a tame, overgrained animal, no matter what the breed. Our Jersey cow when I was growing up would let us know if we weren't in the barn by 6 a.m.. She wanted her grain!

My husband and I both come from dairy families, and we milk goats the lazy way. We don't take the kid off of them. We haven't milked this year at all, but in the past, we have taken one milking a day, or even every other day. It only gives a quart or two per goat. You have to milk around the same time, to develop the supply correctly. Once the milk supply is established and the kids are grazing or eating hay, it does not seem to hurt their growth and development at all. The extra feed the mom gets while milking increases her supply substantially, and despite the kid, the amount of milk goes up as you go. We don't need gallons in this household, and it works for us when we want it to.

Gwen

Then
you stand back with a bucket of water and throw it at
the fence. If the water goes through, it ain't a goat
fence.
More true than not.
Jim





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