How to milk a cow
For the past three months we have been milking our Jersey cow Noel. It has been a VERY interesting experience to say the least. Below are our top recommendations for beginner milkers out there.
#1 Have the right stanchion setup.
We started off milking Noel in the stall you see below, however, the bar we installed on the bottom did not detach and I couldn't milk her. So we put her out in our head catch where we brand and tag our cows outside. This worked for a while but I was eaten by flys and mosquitoes and really wanted to be back in the barn.
Our wonder friends who live down the road sold us a 100 year old industrial milking station used for assembly line milking cows. This was a great idea, but it turned out, it wasn't strong enough to hold Noel so we had to think of plan "D."
Brett was able to integrate the milking stall from our friends and our old milking setup he welded by using the head catch portion from one and the side rails from the other. So far...it's working like a charm!
We did not see this being such an issue when we first started but it clearly is an important part of your milking setup. There are some great online tutorials on how to build a milking stall out of wood, however, we wanted ours made out of metal so it would last forever (or until we are done milking).
If you want to know how we built this stanchion comment below and we'll work on this tutorial, however, Brett doesn't think anyone would go to the trouble of making one like this, so I said I'd ask our readers. :)
#2 Have the right equipment for hand milking
The equipment we use is below with links. Remember we are not using a milking machine (yet) but so far this is all we have needed:
- Stainless Steel Bucket
- Stainless Steel wash pail
- 1.5 gallon Stainless Steel milking pail
- 2 rags (one for cleaning and one for drying)
- Teet balm
- Stool
- Poop bucket
- Tail clip (I don't personally use this all the time because I like being able to see if her tail goes up so I can catch the poop or pee)
