A few words about milking goats and sheep

Since coming to the new farm, our days revolve around the needs of sheep and goats. This makes sense, seeing as they have the power of the majority – about 25 goats and 6 sheep (including the worlds cutest lamb). Twice a day we care for them, feeding and watering all, milking some. This very basic care we provide is not hard but it does require quite a bit of sweaty work.

The goats and sheep are kept in separate pens on the farm. When it comes to ruminants that are used to roaming (goats, like sheep, move in grazing herds) fencing is key. The goats are kept in a pen large enough that they have enough space to “browse” comfortably, with fences high enough to discourage jumping. Some people use goats to clear brush, but there's not really enough here for that. To compensate, we cut branches off of mac nut trees and hang them in the pen.

The farm has more nuisance grass than brush, so the sheep are regularly relocated. Their main pen is disassembled and moved to problem areas. It's quite small, so they only spend their nights there. During the day they are released into an even less substantial solar-electric fence. The small shock (about 9 volts) is enough to keep them inside. There's enough of a psychological deterrent that they don't even touch the fence when it's inactive.

Both the goats and the sheep are also given daily mineral supplements with their food. Because these milking animals were not bred for the tropical clime, internal parasites can be a problem. They are also given worm medication at least 3x more often than they would be in a cooler climate. The dewormer is basically the same thing you'd give your dog, and probably less difficult to do.

Aside from feeding and watering, which we've discussed in a previous post, milking is the main chore.

There are three goats (Maybelle, Callie, and Latte) and two sheep (Dolores and Trudy) on the current milking rotation. Each animal is only milked for a few months at a time to help keep them healthy. This is based on their natural limits: goats and kids feed from their mothers for less than a year before moving on to solid foods.

Goats are much easier to work with than sheep. We lead them out of their pen one at a time to the milking station, a homemade platform with a guillotine style head-lock that keeps them in place (and the bucket for tasty corn/alfalfa feed doesn't hurt). The goats all know the routine and take their turns running out of the pen, up the platform and just put their heads into the gizmo, anticipating the extra food they'll be given. Each of the goats has a discernable personality, but they all tolerate the milking; our hands are nothing compared to the kids' biting. They don't kick and don't fuss unless a dog is around. Their utters are really big and almost conical in shape, making it really easy to get a grip and squeeze out the milk. It didn't take us long to become comfortable working with the goats. And they're great producers; we are getting almost a gallon a day from just these three goats. The only difficulty in milking the goats is dealing with a few feisty non-milkers who often manage to butt their way through the gate as we usher a milker in or out.

While sheep are more easily led than goats, they're not as smart. You can't just open the gate and let them find their way. Dolores is so clueless that we actually walk her on a leash. They are, in general, a little more difficult to milk. Their utters are much smaller, more round and squat against their flanks, and they kick more on the stand. Learning a decent grip by which to milk them took us each at least a few weeks, but we are now happy to report we are both experts at sheep milking.

So what's the difference between goat and sheep milk? Goat milk is the closest thing to human milk in it's chemical structure. Lactose intolerant adult humans (like K) almost always can drink goat milk without a problem. Goat milk is also used more often in the US to make cheese and yogurt, but sheep milk is more traditional in herding cultures (sheep milk products are still common in Turkey, for example, and true feta can only come from a ewe). Sheep milk has a much higher fat content than goat milk, and as a result, tastes “sweeter.” Some people find goat milk to taste, well, “goaty.” The milk flavor is the same taste present in chevre cheese, more sour than the sheep milk, but we've learned that the goat milk really only tastes goaty if there is a male goat within a few miles of the milkers. Females produce some hormone in reaction to male pheromones and it's this hormone that produces that goaty flavor. There are not any male goats on our farm, and no neighbor within a few miles keeps goats, so we don't have to worry about that kind of contamination.

We are currently in the process of learning how to make cheese and yogurt! We'll do a post on that as soon as we manage to get that skill under our belts.