Udderly Ticklish - Day One at the Creamery

Milking goats- no problem right? Just stick the sucky things on the teats and away you go? Everybody has seen Farmer John on TV, sitting on his stool and milking his happy cow into his silver steel bucket. Many of us have even milked the fake cow udder at UC Davis' annual picnic day. So, on my first day at the creamery I walked into the milk parlor thinking that those caprine cuties would practically milk themselves. That is not what happened. At first I watched the milking process as Laura, the current herd manager, invited 12 goat ladies at a time onto the milking stand and gracefully dipped, wiped, and milked 24 (give or take a uni-udder) teats without a single hiccup. Ok got it, looks pretty easy. It was my turn to step up and take charge of two out of the twelve goats being milked each time. First, pre-dip to clean the udders. Dip, dip...kick. Kick? They kick? Apparently those lacking udder handling confidence tickle the teats too much and annoy the goats' milky bits. Hence cloven hoofs a flyin. Now what? Apparently if you have an onry goat you have to grab the kicky leg as you go about the process. Ok, got it. Dip, kick, grab, hang on for dear life, dip as you wrestle goat leg. Now go back and wipe the pre-cleaning solution off each teat. Duck and swipe, swerve and swipe. Whew, we have clean teats. Now you hand milk a little bit to rid the udder of any bacteria and make sure a healthy milk supply is a flowin. You'd think you just pull down on the dangly bits but once again, that is not how it goes. Bump up on the udder, roll the teat a little then pull down on the dangly bit and hope that milk comes out. Then miss the hand milk cup, spray milk in your eye and all over the equipment. No problem you think, I'll just make up for it with my awesome machine milking skills...I mean how hard can it be to put a sucky thing on a teat? Grab the two sucky things in both hands but realize you need one hand to turn on the sucky things. Put the two sucky things in one hand but they are difficult to hold in one hand and keep flopping around. Turn on the suck function and try to get the sucky things on the teats as the goat is prancing around. The udders kind of point forward so use one hand to manuever the teat. Suck glove into sucky things, have to turn off the suck function. Turn the suck function back on and get kicked at because you are being annoying. Grab crazy goat leg and get the sucky things on the udders, only to realize that the sucky things are now twisted. Repeat process and at last success! Meanwhile, Laura has finished her ten goats. Geez. Last but not least, you annoy the goats once more to make sure the udders stay healthy by dipping each teat into lanolin and iodine solution. So, once again, swerve and dip, duck and dip. All right mission accomplished, done. Then you realize that you have only milked one out of 9 groups of 12. Repeat entire above process 8 more times. I quickly learned that you have to be udderly (you will see this play on utterly a lot so I would just accept it) assertive in order to milk goats, as teat tickling is unacceptable in the dairy goats' world. I'd like to give a shout out to bluebell for standing spread eagle still as I tickled your teats mercillessly. However, Alice, we're gonna need to work on our relationship. So, milking goats is no easy task but overall is was a wonderful experience and getting to play with the goats before and after milking is a joy. They want to be in your face, nibbling your clothes, and interacting with you at all times. What other livestock animals can you say as much for? One last note, pants with buttons, shirts with zippers, and shoes with laces are highly unadvisable for one who will be spending a great deal of time surrounded by goats :) You are basically a walking play thing, especially if you are wearing all of the above at one time.