Day 1 (Monday the 11th): I was going to start after Search and Rescue on Sunday, but I was so tired after our weekend away with only 4 hours of sleep so... I thought 6 am Monday would be just fine. A little after 8 am Monday, I headed out to the barn with a bowl of warm water, my softest washcloth, and some sleepy eyed determination. The warm washcloth is like the wet warm mouth of a baby and is supposed to help, plus gets their udders and teats nice and clean! So, I did that. And then the milking part is like practice - low expectations, rhythmic milking while imagining something is actually coming out. Petunia got a bit sticky! Very encouraging. Nothing from Esther. Milkings continued every 2 hours until 10pm. Tim helped for one of them by trying to entertain the goats and Nancy came by for one to watch and help keep the food supply flowing to the patient beasts. I was going to milk at 12, then 2 or 3 am and so on, but at 11:45, yes, 11:45 pm - I couldn't wait another 15 minutes, I fell asleep. And opted out of that 2 or 3 or 4 am milking. That sort of thing is for crazy people! Besides, the girls weren't very impressive with the milk production the first day, so why should I waste precious sleep and get nothing to show for it?
Day 2 (Tuesday the 12th): Starting off not feeling very motivated. There was no miraculous appearance of milk in the (8a, 10a, 12n, 2p, 4p, 6p, 8p, 10p...) 8 attempts on day 1, then I slacked off for 8 hours and let everything go back to nothing so what's the point? It's probably not going to work anyway! Regardless, I dragged myself out of bed at 6 am, and again at 8 am to repeat the process. During the day, I got multiple (small) squirts from each teat during multiple milkings from Petunia - very promising! Still absolutely no sign of hope from Esther. I decided to trip Esther's hooves instead. It didn't go well. She kicked and I held her mostly upside down and cut off a bit too much and made her bleed and and and... So then I let her eat all the peanut butter and molasses and peanuts and goat treats and sunflower seeds and oats and alfalfa pellets it took for me to stop feeling guilty and for the bleeding to stop while I gave her a vigorous brushing. More milkings mostly on every two hours, though I can't set 12 alarms at a time on my phone so a time or two I was a bit late and the 6 pm milking turned into a 7 pm milking... Every three hours is still pretty good, right?
Day 3 (Wednesday the 13th) I had a milking plan. I lazy yet effective milking plan. I was going to have my goats bred, have them kid, then after a few weeks start separating the kids at night and milking in the morning, gradually separating the kids earlier and earlier in the afternoon until they are completely weaned and I get all the milk at 8:30 every morning. Instead I am doing this. I made the midnight milking on Day 2 and was delighted with the number of small squirts of milk hitting my arm and thought for sure I was motivated enough to get up at 3 am. At the actual 3 am? Not so much. The 6 am milking produced a good number of squirts from Petunia (nothing from Esther still), but also suggested she is either tired of the grain and routine or is getting sore teats from all my squeezing. Poor thing. She will get used to it and I am trying to be gentle, but maybe she's just not a morning goat? I'm thinking it may be time to upgrade my milking stand to include a clip to hook into their collars and remind them of the importance of standing still. By the end of the day, I did get 30 squirts from one teat from one milking! Still not a measurable amount in standard terms like ounces, but serious improvement. Also I gave up entirely on Esther.
Day 4 (Thursday the 14th) Is today day 4? It's all running together! So many milking sessions! So many days without a proper night sleep! Today I sat down and made a calendar - the future milking schedule! I am counting down the days until I can sleep more than 5.5 hours a night. It looks like it may be all the way through the end of this month and into the first week or two on June before I start pushing apart the 12 midnight and 6 am milkings. I am hoping not to leave my goat-sitter, Nancy, with too terrible a task, though she did want the goats to be in milk saying she was looking forward to it! By the time I leave for fishing, I plan to be down to 4 milkings a day at 7am, 2pm, 9pm, and 12pm, working towards three milkings a day at 7am, 3pm and 11pm. From there it will be up to Nancy to get Petunia down to just the 8:30am/pm two milkings a day. Agg! Day 4 and I am dreaming of when it will be over! Really, every two hours is pretty demanding and figuring out the proper transitional schedule is tricky stuff. I made a very cool milking time gauge on my fridge today to keep track of it all and visualize with. I've given up on Esther, Petunia has largely given up on food in favor of licking me and nuzzling me. I have been rewarding with a scratchy brush after milking to supplement the not-so-appealing food. I have been counting 300 squeezes a session on Penuia's Teats - not all producing full squirts of milk but the first few are now pretty solid and in tandem.
Day 5 (Friday the 15th) Day 4 was rough. Day 4 was a lot of milking and not much milk, though more than day 3 and day 2 and day 1, which is the important thing to remember. Day 5 is going much better, feeling more optimistic, feeling hopeful. I re-evaluated by milking schedule and decided to start stepping it up a bit sooner rather than later. The most dedicated bottle-feeding schedule I could find for newborn goats in the top 3 Google results suggested every 2-3 hours for the first week, then moving on to every 4, 5, 6 etc each week after until it gets, you know, reasonable. If that's how babies eat, then that's how I'll milk! They also said to do the 6 hours of sleep a night thing the second half of the first week, then quickly start moving towards 8, long before the rest of the day is yet in 8. Today is an every-2-hours-and-45-minutes day, which is nearly 3 and so much less like two then yesterday's every 2-2:30 schedule. I am tired, but milk is coming out! I estimate between a teaspoon and a tablespoon per milking x sooo many milkings per day. I mean... 10 milkings per day? I guess I'm down to 9 today. Anyways, that comes out to be nearly a cup of milk! It looks like it's about time to start aiming for a bowl and measuring it. Maybe I'll have milk on cereal instead of licking drops off my fingers. It is beginning to all be worth it.
Day 6 (Saturday the 16th) The whole milking thing is getting to be a comfortable and normal schedule with rewarding milk production. Today I made my first attempt to collect the milk. This meant holding the jar up close to petunia's body while milking with one hand at a time and trying to aim, then giving up after the first 20 squeezes or so and closing up the jar to resume my normal milking habits. Even missing a bit of each milking, I managed to gather about 4 teaspoons over my 8 milkings, which is pretty good considering a few days ago she had no milk at all! Milk production should continue to increase and in a few more days we will be down to 4 milkings a day, 8 hours of sleep at night, and maybe a cup of milk a day - enough for me to drink. I look forward to coming home at the end of summer to (hopefully) a reasonable amount of milk production, enough to make some cheese and butter and ice cream and yogurt and drink as milk - yum!
Wide-mouth mason jar with the day's milk
Tablespoon full of milk
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