precocious milker continued

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We have been correctly milking, I hope, for 1 week. My daughter is milking. She squeezes the teat just below the udder with her index finger against her thumb and then presses with her other fingers on the rest of the teat. The milk is still pink, not truly pink, but a definte pink cast when held up to the goat milk I get from a friend.

The goat is good natured except for leading her around. Should we try to dry her off and give her a break to heal? How would we go about that? Thank you for your help.

-- Lori Pruett (happybusymama@earthlink.net), June 19, 2003

Answers

Has the amount of pinkness in the milk been reduced at all since changing the milking technique? (Hopefully it has shown some improvement?) I would not dry her off just yet- if you do that her udder will swell with retained milk, and with damage already having been incurred, my feeling is that she would be more prone to getting mastitis at this time. If you want to dry her up, I'd wait until the pinkness subsides entirely, and then dry her up gradually by leaving a small amount of milk in the udder each time when you milk, until there's very little milk left to take; it would take about a week. Sometimes people just flat out stop milking, I would not do that with this doe.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), June 19, 2003.

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