So my grandparents has a farm and I was raised on a farm for a certain amount of my youth, and I always loved the stories of the old farm and of course had a certain amount of O my goodness stories from our farm days as well.

When it comes to my own farming, I have learned to do a mix of things my grandparents did or taught me at a young age, a mix of things my folks did and or how I was taught on the farm and a mix of new things learned either from books, working the skills or the school of hard knocks..

I was laughing at my one sweet sheep, she has been used as a milking sheep for the house, (which by the way I have found out I milk a sheep “wrong” compared to you tube but it worked for me, so why change it if it was not broken.

Anyway, she is getting later in her pregancy, and looking mighty fine and uber healthy, I mean she has a lovely baby glow about her but she is also really starting to get pushy about getting her milking ration, she will try and go between the cows legs to get at their feed or she will just plain beg..

I will admit that I do give her treats which don’t help the issue but she is a sweet thing… and I am looking forward to making sheep feta cheese again with her lovely rich and creamy milk.

But it got me to thinking about a old story about this milking goat that my grandparents had, now they had milking cows and sold the cream for extra cash on the farm, but I have heard about the goat.. now the thing that makes this goat special is that she was never bred but still freshened each spring with the cows or as needed for new house babies..

The story goes like this.. when the goat was needed to produce milk, she would be brought into the milking parlor and her bag washed and cleaned and bumped and “milked” this was done morning and night along side the milking cows, and by day three or four, she would start to make milk an then just increase until she was bagged up and going..

Now I was raised with this story and as a child/teen and even into my twenties I would just go.. ok, so cool..

but now as a adult, I stand in amazement of that story because I don’t doubt that its true, but that it was able to happen time and again, no wonder this was the goat that stayed till old age and was treated like gold on the farm.. really its quite amazing, and who would have thought to try it the first time? The answer as I understand it was the need for goat which is easier on the tummies of the baby that needed it then cows but still it would have been a brave moment to go.. well, lets see if we can get a dry animal to start producing milk for us just by asking her nicely and putting her into the routine.

I can’t imagine for a second that she would have produced the amount that she would have if she had freshened but I don’t have that answer, she gave enough for what was needed..

I was thinking of trying a experment this winter, I thought I might take a dry unbred yearling ewe and wait for the rest to freshen and see if I can could get her into milk by just putting her into the milking rotation..  I find the need to see if I can do this but I do know that it was said the goat had kids at one time but they didn’t bred her back, they just brought her into milk.. so might not work for a yearling.. Will keep you posted.

Anyone out there having done this themselves or heard of it and how did it work for you?