Milk goats like consistency. Milk at the same time each day.  Follow the same routine each milking.


1  Wash your hands. Dirty hands spread disease.

2  Wear Nitrile Milking Gloves to reduce the spread of mastitis causing
germs from your hands. The small cracks and crevices in human hands harbor a
lot of bacteria including contagious Staph Aureus.

3  Sanitize your milking machine with a chlorinated sanitizing solution just
before you milk.

4  Entrance. Bring the Goat into a calm stress free milking environment.
Stress, such as loud noise inhibits milk let down.

5  Fore Strip. Hand milk 1 or 2 squirts from each teat onto the black screen
of a strip cup. Look for clots, clumps, blood, or signs of abnormal milk.
Fore stripping promotes milk letdown amd faster milkout

6  Teat Prep and Sanitation. The purpose of this step is to reduce the
amount of bacteria on teat skin and promote milk let down

 Teat Wipes  Wipe and massage each teat for 15 seconds. Use one wipe per
goat or one per teat if they are visibly dirty. Teats will dry in a few
seconds due to the alcohol in the wipes

Pre Dipping   PreDip with Teat Kote 10/lll. Wait 30 seconds, then dry off
with a paper or cloth towel. Use one clean towel per goat. Do not re-use the
towel as this may spread disease from one goat to the next.

7  The goal is to milk clean, dry teats. Wet udders are a good conduit for
bad bacteria and mastitis aka udder infections. Wet udders may drip down to
the top of the liner and if the liner slips it will suck in the dirty water.
Limit water use on the udder.

8  Apply the milker within one minute of the beginning of teat preparation.
This maximizes the animals natural milk let down via oxytocin, speeds up
milk flow, and reduces the machine on time. Let the vacuum pull the milker
onto the teat.

DO NOT force the teat into the liner. It only needs to go in about 1/2 inch.

9  Adjust milking unit so it hangs square with out twisting the teats. A
little forward tension will provide faster milkout. Stainless steel shells
will milk faster and more completely than clear plastic shells.

10  The goat is finished milking when the large volume of milk flow drops
off to a trickle. You can see the milk flowing in the clear milk hoses. Milk
out time should be less than 5 minutes on most goats. Shut off the inline
valve, then gently pull the milker unit down off the teats.

11  Animals that were hard to milk by hand will take longer to milk with a
machine. Most healthy udders will shrink significantly when milked out.
Except for the first few days when the udder has a lot of swelling aka
edema. Usually the swelling leaves within a few days and then the udder
should shrink when milked out. Dynamint udder cream will help reduce
swelling if used in the first few days after kidding.

12  Should you post strip? No. Research has shown that post stripping may
cause more harm than benefit. It may train the goat to hold back some milk
and your hands will contaminate the teat skin at a vulnerable time when the
Keratin teat end seal is open. If the goat is not milking out properly, then
you may need to adjust the way the milker is hanging, adjust the pulsator or
vacuum level, or have your milking machine checked for proper operation.

13  Post dip for Teat disinfection. Post dipping sanitizes the teat skin
including the opening at the bottom of the teat. Post dipping has been
proven to dramatically reduce cases of udder infections. Post Dip with
AstroTek, Teat Kote, or DermaSept protocol tested teat dips. Use the Hamby
Dairy Supply dip cup provided with your milking machine. This non-return
style dip cup provides a fresh dose of teat dip for each teat. For
temperatures below 25 degrees, DermaSept is recommended because it will not
freeze.

14  It is important to keep the dairy goat standing for a while after
milking. This will give some time for the wax like seal of the teat orifice
to seal back up. A good solution is to have a rack of fresh hay and fresh
water available right after they exit the milking parlor.

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