This happens to everyone now and then, right? Now, truthfully, what do you do with that pail of milk? Let's say this is an average hoof, with some undisclosed amount of straw, mud and manure on it.

-- Rachel (rldk@hotmail.com), May 31, 2000 Answers Me first. If there's more than four pounds of milk in the pail and we need the milk, I strain it, pasteurize it, and drink it.

-- Rachel (rldk@hotmail.com), May 31, 2000.

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i don't pasteurise(sp?) so i would feed it to my neighbors pigs, or mix it with some grain for the chickens. but i would not drink it.laura

-- laura cavallari (ladygoat13@aol.com), May 31, 2000.

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Same as you, Rachel. But I don't drink it myself. Kinda picky and weird about that, but use it none the less.

-- Doreen (livinginskin@yahoo.com), May 31, 2000.

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You don't have to have goats very long, or trim many feet to not want to drink the milk! On the average week we will have no does with feet in the bucket, this usually happens in early lactation to young does or new does, so I will not keep alot of milk in the bucket, so as not to loose to much. I will also milk into a smaller pail with one hand, while holding the pail with the other, until they get the hang of it. But to the dogs goes icky milk or colostrum/milk from 12 hours to around 36. Refuse to pasturize this milk with just enough colostrum in it to make curds, yet not enough colostrum in it to be worthwhile! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), May 31, 2000.

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YUM!!! On a serious note, we give the milk to the dogs, chickens, calves, etc. I don't have too many incidenced, but, when i do its those young bratty milkers. I know who to milk to get house milk. Bernice

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), May 31, 2000.

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Usually it gets shared amoungst the chicks, dog and cats... but to be honest their have been times that I have used it... in meals etc, if we are despirate for milk. We only have one goat, and she is our only source. That aside, it rairly happens, but lately, I think we are headed for some trouble. Mosquitoes seem to really bother her, and she is tail swishing and starting to hop around. I already changed milking time to later, but am still catching the dusk time 'skeeters. Any ideas?

-- Marci B (daleb@kent.net), June 01, 2000.

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Marci, I have one of the "young bratty milkers" and she continually was lifting her right rear leg up past her udder which resulted in two spilt milk incidents. What I did was tie a short rope (16" approx) to cattle panel that is on her left side (I milk from the right) near her rear legs and make a slip not then lift her rear right leg insert the foot and bring it up over the bend in the leg and tighten the slip knot. Keep the rope behind the legs. This really helps the foot in the pail and spilt milk problems.

-- Doreen (livinginskin@yahoo.com), June 01, 2000.

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Marci, I milk with a big shop fan blowing on me and the doe, it works great, mosquitos can't fly against that breeze! Another great trick is Bronco Horse Fly, it is ultra cheap through Jeffers or even at Walmart, smells good and I spray a light spray on the milk stand before I start and 3 sprays down the doe. Our fly bullets keep the flys away but this works for mosquitos great! Now the June bugs! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), June 01, 2000.

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That's happened to me before! LOL!! Sort of looks like weak chocolate milk, doesn't it! If its not toooooo bad, then why not drink it? Anabelle doesn't do it a whole lot, usually when the bugs are bad. I always try to keep a ready hand, though, just in case. Also, if you lean in very close, it makes it hard for the cow to lift her foot and gives you time to move the bucket and take the hoof, instead!!! Also, do any of you milk on the 'wrong' side of the cow? Our cow is much better behaved if we milk on the wrong side. But maybe that's the cow -:0)

-- Abigail F. (treeoflife@sws.nb.ca), June 01, 2000.

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We had one bad-tempered doe who seemed to step in the milk pail about every other milking. I didn't use the milk -- fed it to the chickens and pigs. And I learned to milk holding the pail up high and forward in one hand, and move it quick when she picked up her foot! It was a double milking stand, and there wasn't anything to tie her hoof to, or I would have.

-- Kathleen Sanderson (stonycft@worldpath.net), June 01, 2000.

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If the foot touches the milk at all,I either throw it away or give it to the dog. It would be like drinking maure tea. Just because it is strained,doesn't mean that the bacteria is not there,straining only removes the solids. Now,sometimes a tiny flake of dried manure from the doe's belly falls into the pitcher and sets on top of the foam.In that case, if it is dry and not very big,I'll flick it out carefully,taking the foam it was on out,too,and resume milking.If you keep milking,it falls into the milk. Nearly all my does have kicked a little at some time,and it sure is a pain to lose the entire milking from all the does. So now we milk into a small pitcher with a handle. If there is a nervous Nellie,you can hold the pitcher up with one hand and milk with the other. If the worst happens and she is a really good aim, you have still only lost her milk, not everyboby else's along with it.As the pitcher fills,I empty it into the stainless steel bucket,which has a lid to keep the flies out. That is another thing- if a fly dies in the milk, I throw it away to the dog.If there is an insect that is still alive,I take it out and strain the milk. When we milked into the main bucket, we lost a lot of milk, especailly with the young yearling milkers which were the last to be milked. It was so aggravating to throw away everybody's milk just because of one antsy yearling!! But back to the manure,etc,as it is, our cooling facilities are not the ideal because we don't have ice,except in the winter(!),and I could not forgive myself if one of my children got seriously ill or died due to a lack of sanitation on my part in handling the milk. This is not to mention our milk customer with a baby who can't drink anything but goat's milk. I don't have any control over whether they are going to let that milk set on the counter for half an hour at a time, or put it in a bottle and let the bottle set out all day long. The bacteria from that manure could multiply to a level high enough to make that baby sick, and then we would be in hot water. It is just not worth the risk,so I throw it out if the doe steps in it.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@transport.com), June 02, 2000.

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I never got around to making a goat stand, and I am right handed and coundn't seem to get my left hand to work at the same time as my right, and since my only milking goat moves around from time to time, I milk right into a quart glass milk bottle. We used to have a local dairy that used these up to the time they went out of business, four years ago. I buy them up at yard sales or auctions if cheap enough. Once I'm done milking, I go to the house, use a funnel and strain it into clean quart bottles and put in the fridge. Yes, some bottles do get broke from time to time, but I have enough to last for years!

-- Michael W. Smith (kirklbb@penn.com), June 04, 2000.

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Yeah, no way. I dump it and hopefully, start over with a clean bucket or the tote. I haven't had that happen with these new goats I have now, but used to have a togg that liked to "river dance" on the stand from time to time. She was a fast eater and got bored.

-- Jim Roberts (jroberts1@cas.org), June 05, 2000.

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Sounds like cat milk to me. ; - )

-- Connie (Connie@lunehaven.com), June 06, 2000.

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About 2 years ago my husband was picking up a bull calf at a big commercial dairy. They had an automated milking system where the teat cups fall off the cow when the milking is done, then another cow comes in and gets hooked up. With his own eyes he witnessed a cow urinating onto the cups when they dropped off and the urine being sucked into the line. He asked one of the workers if they shouldn't stop the milking to deal with this. No, says the worker, because it won't show up on the milk tests and pasturizing will take care of the rest. Because we drink our milk raw, feed it to our babies, and give milk to several families, we make sure the sanitation is maintained.

-- Anne and Bill Tower (bbill@wtvl.net), June 06, 2000.

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Well, it all depends. How dirty was the hoof? If it's muddy out, and there's a lot of dirt on it, I throw it to the pigs etc. But if it wasn't too bad I strain it and use it. Of course that won't keep the bacteria from growing, but we usually have more milk then we need, and I replenish our house-supply once a day, so there isn't that much time for it to get a very high bacteria count. My kids (human) are 10 and 8 , so there aren't any real little ones, if there were , I might not use it for them. I think about those kind of things a lot, though, because I never pasteurize our milk, and all our meat is home -slaughtered, and -cut up. Our vegetables are grown in soil that has manure in it etc. After a few years of this , I came to the conclusion, that either our immune systems got used to all this,and got stronger( we do seem to be sick a lot less than other people), or a lot of it is just hipe about very remote possibillitis and we all know, what goes on in commercial food production, and it can't be any worse than that.

-- karin morey (wind_crest@hotmail.com), June 07, 2000.

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Thanks for answering, Karin, you make me feel better! I agree that sometimes that hoof is just in and out, and the milk isn't discolored or gritty. Important to notice that I pasteurize all of our milk. I do this for the kids (CAE prevention) and for us humans, too. Even thermophilic bacteria would be cut down to small numbers after 145 for 1/2 an hour, and any normal flora from a goat would be mesophilic, (their body temp around 102-104), so definitely heat killed. Every time we crack an egg, or eat a veggie raw from the garden, or put our fingers in our mouth, we are eating dozens of foreign bacteria. For healthy people, this isn't a problem. 10 years ago, when Bovine Somatotropin (BST/BGH) was being introduce widely for dairy cows, there was a raging debate about milk quality. It is a fact that BST-treated cows have a higher incidence of mastitis, and there is more pus in the milk. This is fine, since they pasteurize milk for human consumption, and what we are really getting in every gallon of grocery store milk is more dead white cells.

What I would get in my hypothetical gallon of goat milk, after straining and pasteurizing, is more dead bacterial cells. And, after all, I could eat mud and manure without it killing me. Probably wouldn't even make me ill. Maybe get worms.

We use all our milk for our family. And this really happens very rarely. Thanks for all the comments, it is interesting.

-- Rachel (rldk@hotmail.com), June 07, 2000.

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I know this is an old post, but I just had to respond! If one of my does puts her foot in the milk bucket, the bucket of milk is put ON HER HEAD along with a verbal scolding!!! At most I have only had to do this twice and the doe quits putting her foot in the bucket!

-- Diana H (GoteHead5@aol.com), January 09, 2001.

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Diana...ROTFLMAO I no longer have goats but used to milk 6 so you know it wasn't that I would be short of milk. But I can think of nothing that will throw me into an uncontrolled fit of rage faster than a foot in the milk bucket. The air turned blue and the doe wore both the bucket and the milk on her head. Still laff about it after all these years, knowing it would still effect me the same way today. Judith

-- Judith (JHaral2197@aol.com), January 09, 2001.

-- Chamoisee (chamoisee@yahoo.com), June 24, 2001