Once-a-Day Milking From a True Believer

Reader Contribution by Julia Shewchuk and Serenity Acres Farm
Published on December 15, 2016
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I guess the headline gives me away: We love once-a-day milking. We have practiced it now for 1½ years, and we don’t plan on ever going back to twice-a-day milking. Why? It gives us back our 5 p.m. time slot to pursue other projects or, every once in a while, even relax and eat an early dinner. We still get about 75 percent of the milk and use about 2/3 of the grain and only half the supplies. What is not to love?

We were well suited to switch from twice-a-day milking to once-a-day milking: We don’t show our goats, we are not on DHI milk test, we typically milk our does through for two seasons, and we dam-raise our kids and we start out milking the moms only once a day. After four to six weeks, we separate the kids at night for their slumber party, then in the morning, we milk the dams about 2/3, leave breakfast for the kids, and turn them out together for the day.

So, when the time came to wean the kids, we just kept milking the dams once a day, and switched our current milking does to once-a-day milking. It worked for current milking does, because they were towards the end of their extended milking cycle with a slightly lower milk volume. And besides wondering what the heck happened to their evening milking, they settled into the new routine quite quickly and without problems.

Benefits of Once-a-Day Milking

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