About Goats
Our first animals were our chickens, I had chickens for over 15 years. Three years ago came the goats - and if you have a few - you will soon have many. They multiply like crazy.
We have a few small pygmy goats that are very friendly and sweet. We also have the big Saneen Dairy goats who are more delicate to weather and diet.
The pygmy goats don't give much milk and aren't for breeding. The Saneen on the other hand, will put out nearly a gallon of milk in the morning and half as much in the late afternoon - each.
The goat milk is key to starting
off the kids of course - but also get the young hatchling chicks
off to a great start as well as give us all the milk and goat cheese
we want. Nothing goes to waste when the farm is productive.
When you buy milk in the store, it has been homogenized. This means they beat the milk molecules down in order to stablize it (keep the cream from rising). Some people argue that homogenized milk acts like a sand blaster to the arties and is part of the reason there is so much heart disease.
Some of our milk gets pasturized which means it is heated to kill any bacteria. Even though we have a process where the temperature is risen slowly, some people find this objectionable but we do it for saftey, not uniformity of product.
Actually, we find a lot of variation in the taste of our milk from week to week as the goats graze diffent fields and brush and difference from the beginning of milking to the end of the cycle (about 6 months). A few days after they have taken down the raspberry canes, you can taste a slight raspberry flavor in the milk. Same goes for giving the girls oats or beet tops - it gives the milk a flavor. The milk will have a green hue to it when the girls eat only fresh pasture clover and is very rich with cream.
I use a sun tes jar to let the cream float to the top. The spout at the bottom of the jug is where we take milk from as it continues to settle for a few days.
Keeping the billy away from the girls gives the milk a fresher taste and I notice it more in the cheeses made than the actual milk.
A word about goats - they can be trained to haul a cart. The big Kiko goats or the Saneen billies are best suited to this work.