Anyone experience health benefits from drinking raw goat milk?

[ThreeBoysChicks]

Personally, I have stomach issues and I have seen that when I am drinking raw goats milk, I seem to have less issues. No medical study here, just my stomach and my goats milk. Obviously, if a goat sticks her dirty foot in my bucket, that bucket goes to the chickens.

 

[woodsie]

Well here's an interesting tidbit....I am 30 weeks pregnant and recently sold my Jersey cow and was now buying store bought milk again. Turns out I am now highly lactose intolerant...as in, can't even put cream in my coffee without having massive cramps and tummy rumbles for 3 hours. I decided to defrost some raw milk I still have in the freezer and try...sure enough, no reactions. can put milk in my oatmeal, drink a glass - no issues.

 

[Southern by choice]

Well here's an interesting tidbit....I am 30 weeks pregnant and recently sold my Jersey cow and was now buying store bought milk again. Turns out I am now highly lactose intolerant...as in, can't even put cream in my coffee without having massive cramps and tummy rumbles for 3 hours. I decided to defrost some raw milk I still have in the freezer and try...sure enough, no reactions. can put milk in my oatmeal, drink a glass - no issues.

 

[lovinglife]

What great testimonies, I know when I have fresh goat milk my tummy feels better, and don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but it seems to make me more regular!! Like twice a day regular! Also my husband has noticed this intresting side effect. Good thing I have goats! ah well, probably don't need so MANY goats..... will be hand milking 6 in the spring before and after work....

 

[Sweetened]

We had a milk share for a while. There's plenty of science to prove the health benefits and a lot of fear campaigns in the media. I will say this: Raw milk, like tylenol and asprin, is a choice.

My DH has major allergies and constant chest congestion. When we got on the share, he was a little unsure of it. I touted everything I had read about how great it can be fore you and so on (don't worry, I read the fear stuff as well), and I remembered having it as a child as the dairy across from my Grandparents was one of the last in Canada to convert to pasteurization, even after the requirements. I remembered the skim of cream on the top, how it was a treat to sneak it off -- Side tracked!

Anyway, DH started drinking it, and within a week he said: "I don't feel as stuffy." In two weeks his sleep apnea began becoming less frequent and his chest and nose were completely clear. My skin and gut issues were cleared up. Our share farmer sold out of his milkers and we have only gotten pasteurized milk a few times in the past 6 months since and have not enjoyed it. His allergies have come back, as have my skin and gut troubles.

Raw milk, goat or cow, is more digestible than Pasteurized due to the protein v sugar issue. Pasteurization kills the proteins and enzymes that are paired with the natural sugars (lactose), thus your body is missing a key ingredient in digesting. There's lots of independent science out there that has done bacterial introductions into Pasteurized and Raw (ecoli, lysteria and so on). For the first 24 hours, in both types of milk, those bacteria will thrive and multiply. After a few days, however, the inoculated pathogen counts decline in raw milk as they are competing with the live bacteria produced from a healthy cow, just as it would in human breast milk. In Pasteurized, however, it's a clean slate. There is no bacteria to compete with, so they just thrive and contaminate the milk in a startling fashion. Something to consider in these studies is the introduced amount is incredbly high in comparison to what would likely be encountered in a dairy operation.

The problem really lies with ecoli 0157:h7, which is going to hurt you whether it's in raw or pasteurized milk, or on spinach and lettuce, for that matter. That particular strain of ecoli is a mutation that has been linked to -what- has been fed to milk bearing animals and can be spread to other food sources with manure and runoff. o157:h7, imho, was the fault of humans, in its creation, which is a whole other subject.

Anyway, a conservative innoculation study can be found here. A more recent study, which cites some approvals for medications using naturally occuring pathogens in raw milk as basis for treatment (irony anyone), and explains the ability of raw milk to neutralize pathogentic activity and be found here for those interested.

As stated by a few previous people, if a cow sloughs a muck covered foot into the milk pail, throw it out, dump it in the garden or feed it to the chickens right away. Not only would I not drink that raw, I wouldn't drink it pasteurized either. What's encountered, even at organic raw dairies, is a completely different environment than what is typically found on a small homestead or farm. Hand me a bottle of raw and a bottle of pasteurized from a healthy animal, and I'll drink the raw any day, all day.