Our first does are due to freshen in another month, and I keep circling around this question: Should we pasteurize the milk or not?

The folks here either tell me that we will kill off all the good bacteria along with the bad, or that we are putting our children at risk for giving them raw milk.

I do plan on feeding it to my 13 month old daughter, that is my only big concern, as the rest of us (10 yr old included) have drank raw milk with no ill effects.

Any thoughts would be welcome....

-- Tracy (zebella@mindspring.com), January 30, 2002

Answers

Why take the risk, especially to your little one, of not pasteurizing? It's quick and easy to do. We sit a heavy pan inside another pan of water, heat to 165, then quickly remove and set the pan in a sink of ice water to cool it down quickly. Friends who "don't like goat milk" tell us ours is great.

-- mary (marylgarcia@aol.com), January 30, 2002.

Does it change the taste?

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), January 30, 2002.

I'm not sure it's established fact but scientists are researching the possibility of Johnes in cattle which is caused by a bacteria as also causing Crohns in humans.

Pasteurization at least at accepted temps does not seem to kill the Johnes bacteria. Since an Australian dentist discovered that ulcers are caused by bacteria and it took years before the medical community accepted the finding, more thought has gone into the possibility that a lot of diseases with unknown causes may be due to bacteria.

The question is why some folks get ulcers and others don't. Same with Crohns. Man was not designed to drink milk beyond infancy regardless of what the "Got Milk" ads may tell you. Some problems may take years to develop. I wouldn't give raw milk to a youngster.

Years ago I drank raw goat milk. Today I wouldn't. A big problem with identifying bacterial causes of disease is being able to isolate and culture the bacteria.

If current scientific techniques doesn't wotk with an unknown bacteria, you can't prove anything. Meanwhile people still get sick with known diseases that have no known cause.

-- Darren (df1@infi.net), January 30, 2002.

Have your vet draw blood and test for diseases in your goats that you are planning on using for humans. Johnes disease can't be killed by pasturization! There is a study that over 30% of the milk dairy's have Johnes disease. So you are taking a risk just drinking the store milk also. TB is another thing that you can get from milk so have your vet test for that also.

-- shari (smillers@snowcrest.net), January 30, 2002.

I'm not a goat milker, but do buy goat milk from a friend that is. So, here's "my opinion": I prefer to have her pasturize the milk and pour it into sterilized 1/2 gallon mason jars. She uses an electric pasturizer that she says works fine and is easy to use and clean. She sterilizes the jars in her water bath canner. The main reason I prefer it this way is for cleanliness. I know she's as careful and clean as I would be, but there's always the chance of bacteria contaminating the milk (not necessarily what comes from within the goat) and we'd both feel really bad if our five year old got sick from the milk.

-- rose marie wild (wintersongfarm@yahoo.com), January 30, 2002.

My goat, when I milked her, had really goatie tasting milk. And no it had nothing to do with what I fed her, her milk just tasted like an old goat. I found that if I pasturized it, it was drinkable for certain things. One day I will get another goat with good milk. But in her old age Petunia is just our pet.

This doesn't help much sorry about that. I'm not sure what things goats carry that people can get from their milk. If your goats are healthy and not infected with some communicable disease go ahead and feed her milk to everyone,raw.

Susan

-- Susan in Minnesota (nanaboo@paulbunyan.net), January 30, 2002.

You may wish to do some research into why some people prize raw milk. I personally believe that the current popular opinion on pasteurisation is there simply because of big business, big government, big medicine, and higher institutions of learning, all being in bed together.

I grew up in the Mennonite and Amish communities, and we drank raw milk freely. Out of all the hundreds and thousands of Mennonites and Amish we know, NEVER have I heard of ONE INSTANCE of any disease being gotten from unpasteurised milk. Moreover, I can tell you, that I was rarely sick while growing up on raw milk. Those enzymes in raw milk, are there for a reason. We are wise to respect the way milk was created, and use it as a whole food, undamaged.

If you are worried that your animals may carry diseases, why not get them checked out? Why allow a possibly diseased animal in your pastures? If they pass all the tests for communicable diseases, why pasteurise the milk? To get rid of all bacteria? That's ridiculous. Some of the most dangerous kinds of bacteria can survive pasteurisation temperatures.

But big government and big medicine have convinced us that big agriculture, working with big business, can make any milk safe by the miracle of pasteurisation.

-- daffodyllady (daffodyllady@yahoo.com), January 30, 2002.

How long have you had the goats? Did they come from a clean herd? Have you had them tested for anything? Would you be able to tell if your doe had ecoli, staph, listerosis, Johnnes (and a blood test tells nothing, you use fecal tests in goats) brucellosis, CL, Cryptococcosis, Leptospirosis, Louping Ill, Meliodosis, Q fever, Toxolplasmosis, TB before symptoms or even during symptoms to protect your youngest child with her immature immune system? This is just the list of things passed in the milk, add to that list, Camphylobacteriosis, Salmonellosis, Yersiniosis, if even one particle of poop, a hoof in the milk bucket, etc. reaches the milk. Yes we drink our milk raw at the farm, no I wouldn't sell it raw to you until your child was a healthy 2 year old. I also will not let the 8 month old I watch drink the milk raw, and I won't be feeding it to my grandchildren (our first due in July) raw. Even with my herd, gals born here and still milking 12 years later, it just isn't worth the risk, if I grew all my own grains, and all my own hay, I may not be this way, but I know the CRAP mills extrude into our goat feeds, just because the new tags say free of ruminent blood and bone meal, doesn't mean they aren't putting in all other sorts of nasties! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), January 30, 2002.

hey Tracy, last year was my first milking season and i worried about the exact same thing. I have three small children that i planned on feeding this milk to and ... well I asked every goat person that i happened to come across whether they did or not. Every one of them told me that they only pasteurized it for the goat kids, but not for the family - so that's what we did. I can tell you that in the ten or so mos that we drank raw goats milk, no one got sick. No colds no sniffles, nothing! When we switched back to store bought cows milk, everyone got sick. Our does are due to freshen in mid march and i am so looking forward to having that good milk again.

-- Susan (dsowen@tds.net), January 30, 2002.

I agree with dafodlylady .

-- Elizabeth Quintana (floratrek@hotmail.com), January 30, 2002.

i have always loved raw milk since i first had it as a little girl at our family farm when i visited the cousins--cow milk then. i finally got goats to give this gift to my family. we will have babies any day....i am still impatiently waiting.

anyway, if you want to read WHY raw milk products are so valued, check out NOURISHING TRADITIONS. an excellent cookbook/nutritional treatise. also, check out Weston Price on the internet and his foundation. lots of good into on traditional nutrition.

-- marcee (thathope@mwt.net), January 30, 2002.

I too agree with Daffodil lady.

Think folks, how many hundreds of years in how many cultures have people been drinking raw (in some place not even cold) milk???

Certainly we seem to have more bad stuff lurking about but as others have mentioned, if your goat is checked clean and healthy, live with nature.

On a side note, it has been printed (no I don't believe EVERYTHING i read but since it came from a couple doctors as well as a very respected old timer I trust) that store bought is not all that good for you any more. The processing it goes through breaks dowm the good enzymes as Daffodil lady mentioned, and also changes the structure of the fat in a way that that makes it more difficult to digest. And humans think they know better than nature?

-- Novina in ND (homespun@stellarnet.com), January 31, 2002.

i do not pasturize milk for my family use. for three years, raw goat milk is the only milk i have used in my house and i have 4 children, ages now 9,7,4,20 months. the youngest was weaned off of me and onto raw goat milk at 9 months of age and has only been sick once-this year when every one in my family had a mild version of the flu. sniffles and colds are almost non-existent in my house and all of my kids are healthy and so am i. my husband works with the worst of the public, so he gets colds (he also doesn't drink much milk)and he also has allergies. my oldest is allergic to the poison ivy/oak/sumac and used to break out every time she went in the woods-the goats eat the poison... and she no longer contracts a rash-even when she walks right thru the stuff. the kids drink at least one cup of milk a day, plus i bake and cook with it. we can tell the difference in pasturized milk. and the kids don't drink the milk at school-they don't like the taste of that "cardboard milk".

-- laura (okgoatgal@hotmail.com), March 07, 2002.