Questions about milk & cream

[Finnie]

If you go the hose route... and I have here for the chickens sometimes... just make sure you unattach both ends, open or remove any nozzles, and drain and you can get by with using a hose... it will get old after awhile... but it is doable..

I do not do any of this. Maybe I am courting disaster, but I have a sort of complex (and very long) hose layout with 2 Y-splitters so that I have one hose end near the house, one near the first coop and one at the far compound of coops. Which is some 200 feet from the house.

All I do is unscrew the the first Y-splitter from the house wall spigot whenever below freezing temperatures are predicted. I just leave everything laying where I last used it, and then when things thaw again I hook it back up to the spigot and continue using the hoses until the next freeze. I’ve never bothered to drain any of them. The nozzles are all kept shut.

Granted, I do have to replace a Y-splitter or a nozzle once in a while because they are cheap and don’t stand up to this kind of abuse. Probably 1-3 of them ($10-30 worth) each year. Well worth it for all the trouble it saves me. I haven’t had to replace any hoses yet. I did have to repair one once when I wasn’t careful and ran it over with the lawn mower. Most of them are half buried in the dirt after all this time and we always mow right over those, but there is one area we have to avoid. And of course coil up the 3 loose ends that get dragged all over when using.

And it also depends on the climate. We get several freezes each winter here. Some last a week or two but most are very short lived. I just fill buckets or gallon jugs from the spigot or indoors during those times then go back to using the hoses. None of this would work in a colder snowier climate.

But yeah, buried PVC water lines and a frost free hydrant or two would be so much nicer.

 

[farmerjan]

When I was talking to drain the hoses, I was meaning to just unattach both ends so the hose was able to drain... in place... like you do @Finnie I unscrew at the hydrant, but then I open the other end and sometimes I will unscrew in the middle so it gets air to be able to drain better .... except that I do not have flat ground so the water naturally will drain from the hose in one direction or the other. I don't remove them, just "drain in place"... that way I can use them most every day. When I was keeping the meat birds, that was 10-20 gallons of water every day they were drinking...
Hard to believe that you seem to get less "freezing" weather than we get sometimes... but again, I am here sitting right alongside the mountains.... still, we get freezing spells like you, and many days are above 35-40 normally but our nights get down into the 20's most every night during the winter and down into the teens regularly.
Yep, have run over the hose a time or 2 and had to do some repairs also... I have a stretch from the only outside spigot of nearly 500 ft to the greenhouse shelter near the garden.... and I hate spending the money for the "y" connectors so always try to drain it. If the ends are both open, the hose will seldom ever split... the water just expands out as it freezes...

 

[Finnie]

I have a stretch from the only outside spigot of nearly 500 ft to the greenhouse shelter near the garden....

I had no idea your chicken greenhouse shelter was so far from your house! I always pictured it closer.

I am always surprised when I see that your weather often mimics my weather because I always figured Virginia was further south and ought to be warmer. It must be the mountains like you said. Are you at a high elevation?

When we moved here from Michigan almost 20 years ago, I brought my cross country ski equipment with me. But after a couple of years I got rid of it because we just don’t get that much snow here. And I would say after all this time, we get even less now. Just enough to make winter annoying, not enough to make it fun. Fortunately it was fun enough when the kids were little. Maybe that’s the difference. Not out playing with kids in the snow, so all I notice of it is when it impedes my chores.

 

[farmerjan]

Yeah, I always figured you for more cold being further "north"... but the mountains here affect it. @Mike CHS got a killing frost before we did and he is further south than us....south central TN near the border to AL/GA.... go figure... Our elevation here is around 16-1800 ft... we are in the highest elevation of the county here... I am not sure the exact number.
DS has his snowmobile...from when he was a kid... had used it a couple times many years ago... and when I moved here we would get at least one good snow of at least 1-2 feet a winter... one year we had a snow "event" every weekend ( always on a friday it seemed) and never saw bare ground from the week before Christmas until the first week of April... Crazy that the last couple of years has been barely a skiff of snow to about 6 inches maybe one time. There were a couple of winters where we couldn't get into the cows without the tractors going down the road breaking way for the 4x4 truck loaded with 2 rolls of hay... and I remember carrying in sq bales to one place with a long driveway as we could not get a truck in there... buckets of water carried in the bucket of the 4x4 tractor to get up to the chickens at the place I had the pastured layers one winter...
Yeah, fun when you were younger...
The only outside water spigot is on the other side of the house away from the chickens... so over 100+ feet to just go across the yard in front of the house..... PITA.... but it does give me the bit of the hill to be able to take advantage of the draining aspect...

They are saying a tough cold winter this year.... We need some moisture desperately... in some form or another.

 

[Mini Horses]

@adilhussain084 your post is the exact post of this threads beginning, by starter of the thread. So, if you read from beginning, our answers follow.

You may not have realized you hit quote & copied the post?

If you have your own questions, it's fine to add them here

 

[emily7788]

Goat cream has a milder taste with a hint of "goatiness" compared to cow cream, but it takes more goat milk to yield the same amount of cream due to lower butterfat content. Skimming cream subtly changes the remaining milk's thickness, and the choice between cows and goats may come down to your husband's preference for cow milk. Consider Jerseys or Dexters for cows and Nigerian dwarfs or Mini Nubians for goats to suit your smaller-scale setup.

 

[farmerjan]

Goats on DHIA tests mostly all have higher butterfat than most cows. It is that the milk is naturally homogenized so it is harder to extract the butterfat from the skim. Same as sheep. They have a naturally higher butterfat than most cows.

 

[Mini Horses]

I have a cream separator for use when milking several goats. The difference in taste -- cow vs goat -- is primarily due to carotene, IMO. Never found an off (goaty) taste in my does milk, even several days old milk. But I attribute that to breed, then feed, then handling of milk. Just this milkers opinion

 

[frustratedearthmother]

No goaty taste in my milk either. I've done numerous taste tests with folks who swear they don't like goat milk. They are always amazed how good fresh goat milk is! I've even been known to put out two cups of goat milk and they swear one is better than the other, lol. Kinda goes to show that a lot of our taste buds (and prejudices) are in our mind, lol!

 

[farmerjan]

I had had goat milk once and didn't like the taste. Got some from @Mini Horses last year and could not find one thing to complain about. It was good to drink... and kept quite well in the fridge also. That was her transporting it to me 2+ hours and me transporting it home 2+ hours... So the handling does make a difference as well as other things the goat people talk about.