Baby goats were born in the morning, part of building a milking robot is having goats to test it on, and since the robot isn’t ready yet, I also have to do the milking by hand or with the commercially available machine. This in general is good though because you see the pain points quickly and can build the tools that save the most time First. We had 4 babies, 1 dead, 2 male, 1 female. Was a problem because the goat house slat floor ( about 1-inch gaps) trapped the babies and they could not stand. Plus the mother could not lick the legs so they were very cold. Took inside after finding them and immediately milked speedy (mother goat) with a stock mini milking machine. Got about 200-500ml, didn’t measure it as wanted to get it as fast as possible to the babies. Fed this to babies in a bottle. Was difficult to get the female baby to suck. Eventually, putting the goat’s head to my chest and tilting the head up I was able to get the bottle teat into the mouth. Once in this position, all the goats suckled vigorously.
I got only about 180ml of milk at 5 pm milking. The milking machine may not have been fully emptying the teats, I’m not sure if this is from just the goat not making a lot, or the milking machine not providing enough stimulation since the teat size is small on Nigerian dwarfs? I will try milking tomorrow with machine first, then hand milking into a bowl to see if that works better. If the milking claws ( the part that attaches to the teat) are the problem I probably can make some smaller ones with the FDA silicone and 3d printed molds.
Tomorrow I will milk at 6 am, 12 pm, and 5 pm to try to stimulate more milk production.
Sun Aquasystems 