Cheesemaking

Info about freezing milk products--by Easy Living the Hard Way


More on milking the goat; cheesemaking

Feta

Fromag Blanc

Finally, mozzarella success!

Today's mozzarella

Gjetost



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Goat milking/milk handling

This is another new page that will be located under the animals/livestock>goats>goat milking/milk handling

Milk:

Freezing milk for winter consumption

To pasteurize or not? (yes)

Safguard pasteurizer

Cream Separator


Milking:

Kicky milkers

My first goat milking

More on milking the goat; cheesemaking






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Goat mania!

On buying hay

Castration--by Howling Duck Ranch

Keeping goats--by Fias Co Farms--a complete primer

Links and resources

Horns--a discussion by The Simple Life

Trimming hooves--by Easy Living the Hard Way

Goat milking/milk handling

Cheesemaking

Health:

Goat off feed and very low milk production (worms and rumen overload)

Misc:

Homemade hay feeder

My herd:
Billy

On buying hay

When I first started keeping goats, I found their feeding requirements a bit confusing. If you are new to feeding goats, Fias Co has a great page on  her site.

So I've got the basics down now but I still feel flustered when I go to buy hay, as there are so many kinds of hay. Everyone says that if you are milking your goats, top quality alfalfa is a must. But I find that Falcon's milk tastes horrible when I feed her alfalfa. So I've switched their hay to Eastern Oregon hay (here in the valley it rains so much that it leaches too much nitrogen from the soil, rendering too much protein from the grass).

And then there is the question of who to buy hay from. There are so many people around here that sell hay but I have no idea if I can trust their product. So I end up buying hay at the feed store for $12/bale, but I trust their product.

What have you learned about buying hay and where do you buy it from?

Off flavors in goat milk

I suspect that the reason that a lot of people don't like goat milk is because it is highly susceptable to off flavors. I've had one person describe the flavor to me as the "way that goat pee would taste like." I know exactly what they are referring to, as the first batch of goat milk I had when I first got Falcon was absolutely nasty, tasting just like what I would imagine her pee to smell like.

But then her milk got better. There were times that I found her milk irresistable and would drink it straight from the jar out of the refrigerator. To me, it doesn't taste "just like cow milk" as some goat owners would claim, but it tastes sweet, creamy, and a little goaty--but in a wonderful savory way.

For the last two weeks or so, I've detected that yucky flavor again. Not so much as in the first batch that I got from her (which was likely related to moving stress or to whatever the previous owner was feeding her). Several days ago I had to throw out a couple of gallons because it stank so bad. The mozzarella I made yesterday is edible but still has that off flavor.

I noticed when I first got Falcon that if her milk went into a storage vessel that was disinfected with bleach the off flavor would come back. So I've stopped being so heavy on the bleach.

Last night's milk wasn't so bad (but it didn't taste great), but this morning's milk doesn't smell so good.

I wonder if the switch to pure alfalfa, based largely on my vet's recommendation, has anything to do with it?

Ed goes down to feed the goats first thing in the morning, and then late at night just before bedtime. I wonder if milking her two hours or so after she feeds on pure alfalfa has an affect on her flavor.

Well, since this seeems to be a common problem, I will continually add comments to this post regarding any tidbits of information regarding off flavors in milk. Anybody else out there have any comments?

Daphne

......

And here's Daphne. She's my Lamancha/Nubian mix. In these photos she is telling Porter, my little dog, that if he comes any closer she has no problem head-butting him. Good thing she has been disbudded or he would have been gored. Still hurts the poor fella, but that's what he gets for taunting her.

Betsy

This is Betsy, my Nubian/Alpine mix. Approx 1 year old.

My milker

This is Falcon. She's Lamancha/Alpine mix, roughly 3 years old. She has kidded before, not sure how many times. She gives roughly 1 gallon milk a day. Notice the huge udder!

Oh, that stuff on her face is just molasses.

My purebred Alpine

This is Xoe, my purebred Alpine. She's about 3 years old and bred to an Alpine buck. Hoping she will kid soon.

Cream seperator product review

The picture of this is very similar to the model that I have, only mine performs at 80L/hour and is electric.

It is a total pain in the ass to set up and get set up right. If it is set up wrong it won't work and will start spurting out milk from the back.

When it is working it works efficiently. I cannot attest to the other models that are far more expensive. If they operate in a similar fashion, I would not invest in one. ut I still think  this Russian brand at $150 plus shipping was a worthwhile investment. When I have a lot of cream to seperate and don't want to wait for the cream to seperate naturally I will find the seperator useful.

Anyone thinking of buying one should plan on spending plenty of time getting to know it and set it up. And beware that if  it isn't set up properly milk will spurt out the back and make a huge mess all over the kitchen and waste milk.

Feta

I'm attempting Fias Co Farm's feta cheese. I figure if her recipe for mozzarella was so succesful I might as well try all her other ones.

The feta is turning out nicely but I am scared of it. I am squeamish (sp?) about anything that is sitting out at room temperature. And for some reason I keep finding little black flecks on the surface of the cheese... Probably just little particles of dust. I'm having visions of barfing my brains out from airbourne poop. See what this highly industrialized food system has done to me?

The perfectly white milk highlights any little piece of dust that floats into the milk.

So, I didn't age my cheese for the two or three days recommended. It's only been a day. Instead, I got freaked out about a couple little specks on the surface of the cheese and rinsed the curds, then salted them again and placed them in brine for the refrigerator. The flavor seemed to still be coming along nicely, but it is probably not going to end up being nearly as sharp as it could be. We will see how it turns out.

UPDATE 9/09/2010: I have made this cheese several times since. It turns out great every time.

Goat off feed and very low milk production (worms and rumen overload)

Well, over the last couple of days my milker has decided not to eat. I decided something was really wrong last night when she scoffed at eating apples and her grain.

Her first symptom has been as long as two weeks. I've been noticing that her breath stinks. Like sewage. And, just a few minutes ago she spit out some grassy cud that reeks very bad... like makes me wanna barf bad. She did this the other day too, but she was still eating then and just thought it was odd.

We ran out of her normal goat pellets. So I've been giving her corn, oats, barley, though not equally mixed in proportion. And that's only been for a day.

I'm thinking it may be bloat. But I don't see any distension, she's not frothy or anything or acting like she's in pain. She just doesn't want to eat.

I went to take her temperature, but my thermometer decided to rust out and leak fluid. It is not working. But she doesn't feel like she's got a temperature.

Yesterday, I watched her pee and poo. Her pee was very dark colored and it almost looked like she had a little goo come out of her vagina (highly unlikely she's pregnant... but?). Her poop was normal nanny  berries.

I am waiting for the vet clinic to open in 20 mins. Hopefully they'll be able to solve the problem quickly.

Interesting articles on goat bloat:
http://www.hencam.com/henblog/2009/08/hardsoft/

http://fiascofarm.com/goats/bloat.htm

http://resources.quiltwoman.com/blog/?p=70

More on milking the goat; cheesemaking

I think my new goat and I are starting to get used to each other. Except she keeps stepping on my feet when she is scared. One foot has a huge bruise and I think she may have broken a toe on my other foot.

A revolution in our relationship came when Ed decided to put up two guard rails on one side of the milking stanchion. This is so that she cannot jump off and drag the stanchion around all over the place. Strangely, it seems to comfort her. Perhaps she thinks that nothing can get to her on the side with guard rails. She doesn't kick as much. And, if I sit beside her facing the back of her, she seems most comfortable. It is probably what she is used to.

I've learned that when I am getting ready to milk I need to reach under her toward her teats, and touch both of her legs with the backs of my wrists. She has an instinct to kick when her legs are touched and I don't think her kicks are fully in her control. So I'm communicating to her where my hands are and she can do her nervous kick and then put her legs down. If she's hungry, she will then eat away and I can go about my business.

I'm not sure how nicely she was handled at her previous home. She's pretty scared. The lady that sold her to me was very nice and all, but she and her husband were just using Falcon's (the goat) babies for meat. I commented that it is heartbreaking that she be seperated from all her babies and hopefully Falcon will forgive me. She said "Well, they are just animal." Poor mommy.

I think its commendable to raise your own meat, but have serious misgivings about slaughtering animals that I've known and babies that I've raised. But that fear is probably how the meat industry has gotten away with making so much money off us and gotten away with doing so many nasty things to our food supply.

changing the subject: I've tried Ricki Carroll's mozzarella recipe for the umpth time yesterday. I had to decrease the acidity to half to get the texture to actually hold together. I ended up with something edible! But it was still tough and leaked milk and cream at the end. Sooo frustrated. Today I am going to try it with raw milk to see if my pasteurizer is still heating at too high temperature and if that makes a difference. Good thing I'm getting a gallon more or less each day.

Goat fear and/or aggression

I decided to take my new goat, Xoe into our milking barn (the garage) and stanchion her to see how she would react. She got on the stanchion ok, but she really cannot stand me touching her. She tried to head butt me a couple of times and she mouthed me a few times. Not really sure what the mouthing means but it may have been a pre-bite. I'm thinking I just need to get her used to me touching her as I don't want her to freak out too much if I need to help her with her delivery.

There doesn't seem to be much information on aggression or fear in does. Most google results came up with buck aggession.

Here are some interesting experiences:

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/archive/index.php/t-188695.html

Safgard Pasteurizer product review

I found the Safgard pasteurizer on The Cheese Queen's site for $300, which is the cheapest I have seen them. I didn't realize until the unit got here that it came with several free cheese cultures. Cool!

Unfortunately I am finding it very clumsy to use. Maybe once we're used to using it we won't have issues. I find the clamp very hard to get clamped down in the right position. The instructions are clear on what to do, but the illustration is like a copy of a copy of a copy that was originally printed fifty years ago. Annoying.

The buzzer sounded only ten minutes after I plugged it in. The instructions say that the pasteurizer will heat to the right temperature in as little as 24 minutes. So I'm not really sure what happened. And the buzzer sound--it was really weird--so I'm not really sure it was the buzzer or something broken. So I tested the temperature of the water, and it was only 150 degrees. Perhaps the thermostat needs to be adjusted, perhaps my thermometer needs to be adjusted.

I will call the store on Monday to see if I can get these little annoyances worked out, but now I'm beginning to wonder if I should have gone with the Hoegger model.

Seattle Times raw milk article

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011399591_rawmilk21m.html?prmid=related_stories_section

Gjetost

someday I may try making this cheese. I've had it many times and find it awfully good (kinda like crack).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A876800

I made butter!

And it was significantly easier than I thought it would be. I've been skimming the tops of the mason jars that are stored with milk. I've been storing the cream that I've skimmed off the top in a pint mason jar in the freezer. When it was half full today I took it out of the freezer, and ran hot tap water over the jar while lightly agitating until the temperature was about that of a refrigerator. Then I shook the heck out of the jar for a few minutes. The cream started to whip and felt like the jar was completely full. Then all the sudden the little butter grains formed and I shook a few more seconds. Then, I put the wad of butter in a strainer, and the butter milk strained off. Then I smooshed the butter in a ramekin, all the extra buttermilk came to the top and I just poured it off. Viola! Butter.

And I was about to spend a small fortune on a cream seperator. Of course, I could probably a higher yield of cream out of a seperator. So maybe I'll consider that later, when we're independantly wealthy.

I had read in a mother earth news column that some people use a wide shallow pan to let the milk settle and skim it. I was originally thinking that I would do this for our cream seperating, but now I realize that would be counterintuitive as there would be too much surface area to try to skim. It is easiest for me to skim the cream off the top of a very full mason jar with a regular size spoon.

If only it had gone that smoothly for the mozzarella I attempted to make for the 4th time. I think this was the worst batch ever. Totally inedible. Two and a half gallons of goat milk that I worked so hard to milk, filter, pasteurize and then fumble around with huge vats of hot liquid.

I think my problem is two-fold. At least I hope I've figured out what is wrong.

1. My "pasteurizing" technique so far has been to heat in the microwave, which is really difficult. I find that the milk can take forever to get up to the correct temperature but quickly overheats. (Which is true of anything that has fat in it... just think of how easy it is to burn nuts). So I've made sure that I get at least a high enough temperature to kill bacteria, but in some instances it has gotten far too high, which will ruin cheesemaking.

I may have to bite the bullet and get the pasteurizer. Ugh. $400 is a lot to spend.

So that partially explains why this batch turned out so badly, but what about past trials? Well, I was reading on Ricki Carroll's website that many Organic farmers are not listing on their labels that they are using the UHT (ultra heat treated) technique on their milk. Perhaps that is why those previous batches failed.

2. I read on Fias Co farms website that the other trick is to get the acidity right and you have to increase the acidity without overdoing it. Well, how the hell do you know what is what? I don't know. And is it possible that one batch of milk will have a different pH than another batch? I saw these the other day, and I can't remember if I ordered some or not. http://hoeggergoatsupply.com/xcart/product.php?productid=4150&cat=33&page=1

more on my learning how to milk

Well, this morning went a bit better than yesterday's milking, sort of.

First let me say that the goat that we purchased is very different from the other two goats that we have. Our other goats are extremely friendly. In fact, they feel that we are their herdmates and they want to be with us all the time. Our new goat isn't mean but she's very afraid. She's very nervous and really doesn't care for us to be around her.

So this morning I lured Falcoln up on her stand with some grain. Things started off significantly better. She didn't clench her legs or kick me but she did scarf up her grain. Once she was done eating, she decided it was time to be done with milking. She kicked and landed her feet in the pail of milk. So the pint or so milk I got out of her was ruined with all the nastiness on her feet. I gave the spoiled milk to the chickens and dogs and started over.

But she wasn't having it. Not only did she kick but she bucked like a horse. From reading others' stories, this is somewhat unusual. I tried to get the goat hobble back on her but it was too difficult for me to handle. She was still dripping milk because she wasn't finished milking. I don't want her to get mastitis, so I kept at it.

I read yesterday that the purpose of a goat hobble is to put a bit of pressure on the back tendons so that even if they want to kick they can't. Well, I can't figure out how to get the hobble to do that, but I did grab her back leg, above the ankle, and held it firmly, trying to mimic what a goat hobble does. This seemed to work okay, though nowhere near as well as it would have had she cooperated with me. So I was only able to work one teat at a time.

The flavor of the milk was much better today, though I still cannot say it was good. Hopefully the raunchy milk flavor was just due to stress.

My first goat milking!

Well, that was nothing short of a friggin' nightmare. But let me back up.

I've been thinking lately that it is tiresome to pay to feed livestock and keep them when we aren't getting anything in return, so I decided it is time to invest in an actual lactating doe. I found one today, freshened two months ago, and so Ed and I decided to go and pick her up.

She's a beautiful doe, nearly all white with a little blonde. Lamancha/alpine mix. She's got a goatee and I think it's adorable.

I was nervous about bringing her home and introducing her to my other two girls, but it turned out just fine.

So tonight was the first milking. I washed up and sanitized the stockpot that I will be using until I get something more appropriate and brought my goat hobble and a washcloth and wash solution with me to the lovely goat staunchion Ed built.

Problem 1: she didn't want anything to do with getting on the staunchion. No interest whatsoever, even with a big bowl of grain. I tried for like 10 minutes before Ed had to come and rescue me. He struggled and lifted her up while I attempted to do my thing.

Problem 2: I don't think I figured out the goat hobble properly. Since she's so scared from being in a new place, all she wants to do is kick as she hates having her udder touched.So I couldn't get her hobble on all the way and it eventually just fell off.

Problem 3: I happened to pick the most inopportune weather to try milking her. Even under the eave, there was so much rain dribbling off my raincoat and into the bucket.

Problem 4: she clenched her legs closed around her udder. So I could hardly grab onto the udders.

Problem 5: There was small amount of dark brown liquid dribbling in the milk.... as if rain was dripping poop into the bowl. I did the best I could to clean her off, so I'm not sure what the heck that was. I dumpted the pail out numerous times thinking this wasn't normal.

Finally Ed and I were so frustrated that we decided to give it a rest and try again later.

So I took my pail up to the kitchen, strained the milk through a fine mesh strainer (that was still not enough to get all the hair out). After all the dumping and incomplete milking, I ended up with a little over a pint. Pretty good, I think!

Even though I've done much research on the subject of pasteurization, I couldn't wait to taste it. So I took a little one or two ounce sip and about barfed. It was horrible. No really, it was horrible. Everyone says that fresh goat milk tastes so much better than storebbought. But I've had storebought goat milk many times and thought it tasted lovely. My first thought when I tasted it was pee. And then it tasted like that really stinky styrafoam (sp?).

Holly crap I hope that it is just circumstantial. Maybe stress, or maybe something she ate made an off flavor in her milk. We will see.