Anyone Use This?

[Hobby Farm]

We are looking to find an inexpensive, self contained milker for our goats. In searching the net, I came across this:

http://www.goatfinder.com/henry_milker.htm?gclid=CKWbwZu_z58CFdRM5QodL2yK3g

Anyone have one of these. We were considering buying the plans and making it ourselves. It doesn't appear to be any quicker than doing it by hand, but we really like the idea of a self contained system to eliminate debris getting in the milk.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

I've never used one, but from looking at the pictures I have a few concerns.

1. It seems as though you have to use your free hand to hold the inflation to the teat? That would get old quick.

2. The trigger action would get tiresome I think. I think it would be more comfortable to actually hold the teat and milk it, rather than just doing the trigger action repeatedly.

That's just my opinion though.

 

[mogolady]

Bought one. Couldn't ever keep the fittings on the lid tight enough to maintain pressure. Good idea, as with this design there was a gauge to see just how much pressure you were putting on the udder as compared to th EZ-Milker (bought one of those too). It maintains pressure but seems like it would damage udder and some of the girls DID NOT like it. Just my experince.

 

[PattySh]

I bought a refurbished bucket milker from www.portablemilkers.com and love it. When I strain the milk there is nothing ever in it. I can say one day when I did some chores first before milking during freezing weather the pulsator needed to be warmed up with my hand on it. Before I realized what was up the constant vaccum was uncomfortable on the goat's teats. I had to wait a few minutes to get it "unstuck". I think those hand held milkers would work in an emergency like getting colostrum from an animal who would not feed her young but not sure how comfortable they would be in regular use.