madcow
Loving the herd life
I've made my own goat milker out of the attachment port and tube from my Foodsaver for less than $6! It works really well. It has a very low suction rate, so not really a worry about too much for a goat. Ginger had an engorged udder from losing 1 baby and the other baby only nurses on 1 side and it needed to be milked to relieve the pressure. The problem with her is she has extremely small teats and she's difficult to milk. So opted for making my own milker using 1/4-inch plastic tubing, the sleeve portion of a large syringe (with the edges of the opening sanded down for to make it more comfortable around the teat), a canning jar and plastic lid made for canning jars and 1/2-inch holes drilled in the lid and 2 screw-in connectors that have 1/4-inch tubing connectors that I got from Lowe's (made for water connections, so it's food safe). Once the milk started flowing it took only about 2 minutes to get 2 cups of milk milked from her. Once all the air is sucked out of the tubes and the jar the milk starts flowing. My Foodsaver has an automatic shut off once it detects all the air is gone and it senses that the milk has stopped flowing. I can also manually switch it off if I think I've milked enough before it shuts itself off. Here's a picture of the whole thing:
. Awesome!
