Sound milking practices are key in maintaining a healthy udder for your goats and a clean milk supply. Below is a sample milking routine and some useful products to help milking your goat go smoothly. 

Start with a clean, dry doe. It is best to clip hair short around the udder and hindlegs, this is called a dairy clip, and it helps to avoid collection of dirt and debris. 
  1. Remove any debris from the udder and pre-dip with an antiseptic, usually an iodine teat dip.
  2. Allow 30 to 45 seconds of kill time before wiping off with a clean, dry towel.
  3. Strip foremilk - this milk contains a greater number of microbes that entered the teat in between milkings. Stripping the teat of that milk is also a way to check for clinical mastitis
  4. Milk - machine or hand milk 
  5. Apply teat dip or spray, if using spray ensure that the spray makes contact with the entire teat. 
  6. Fresh feed should be available after milking to encourage does to stand to allow time for complete closure of the streak canal before lying down 15-30 minutes to limit bacterial entry into the teat.



Exam gloves - if hand milking use a new clean pair of gloves for each doe. 
Milk check wipes or baby wipes make cleaning the udder easy and since they are disposable they limit transfer of contaminants between does. 
Strip cup - use this cup to strip out fore milk prior to milking. The mesh screen allows easy observation of abnormalities in the milk such as flakes, clumps or blood clots. 
Teat dip and sprays are used to reduce bacterial contamination of the teat. I prefer to use Fight Back teat spray for ease of use. If using spray ensure that enough spray is used to make full contact with the teat. 
Stainless steel milk pails and milk cans can be easily cleaned and sanitized before and after use to minimize bacterial contamination of the milk. These tools can easily be sanitized in most dishwashers by choosing their "sanitize" cycle setting.
Milk should be filtered directly after milking either with a separate filter such as this example. Milk can also be filtered with an in line filter when milking with a machine. 
A scale is a very useful addition to the milk parlor to measure and record milk production. This scale can be sent to your DHIA for certification to be used with formal DHI testing. 
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