Udderly unequal udders

[savingdogs]

Wow! That would be in the budget. I know from working for vets getting a cheap shaver is no deal. I have been waiting until we can afford something good.

What brand beard trimmer?

 

[helmstead]

Right now I have a Remington. Yes, for heavy duty work (show trims, etc), you gotta jump in the deep end and buy a good pair, but for the little stuff, the beard trimmers are fine. And at $10 to $20, who really cares if you have to replace them yearly?? It would take 15-20 years to pay for a good pair at that rate LOL. They do fine for cleaning up long udder hair and disbudding shaves.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

In my experience (did I get that right? ) it doesn't matter if kids were on the doe or not, sometimes they just produce more from one side than the other. My doe's left side produces more than her right side. Doesn't bother me, doesn't matter that I milk them evenly every day. I'm not about to leave milk in the left side to get it to produce less than it is now, and I can't really find the time to milk her right side more frequently. The only issue I can see is when I show her I may have to milk a tad out of the left side to even the halves up a bit if it's very noticeable.

 

[Emmetts Dairy]

Edited to Add:
Your quote irritates me IN GENERAL, not just because you said it. Sooo many people think there's some huge difference between 'show' herds and 'pet' herds. There's not, there should never be. If a show producer doesn't look at each individual in the herd as a pet and care for it as such - they've gotten too big or are into livestock for the wrong reasons.

Thank you for clarifying. Appreciate it. It was a misunderstanding and it happens. It was not meant to be mean to anyone. I was just responding to her use of her goats. And telling her I use my goats in the same manner. Thats as simple as it is. Sorry to offend anyone. Not my intention.

Water under the bridge to me. Its all good.

 

[adoptedbyachicken]

I came here to clean this thread up, but I see it's been resolved, good on you all!



We appreciate the things spoken here, and have many times said that with only typed words (lacking tone, inflection and body language) it's way too easy to misinterpret intent or meaning. Please always consider that in reading someone's post, and before clicking post on your own.

As for the teats I spent a great deal of time as a child at a friend's farm where they had goats they milked and they let the kids nurse till sold. I recall asking the Mom one day why most of the milk goats had uneven udders and she told me it that it had to do with the does habit of laying down on a particular side. She pointed out one goat who was down at the time and told me when she got up to notice the side of the udder that was down would not be as full from the pressure of her weight on it. It did work out for that one, but I have no idea (and no goats!) if that works out most of the time. I was just a kid with a curious question, got a answer and moved on playing with the kids. Lots of wonderful memories there.

 

[Hykue]

I actually was coming here to post about this very thing . . .

My doe, Dash, has a very uneven udder. She is a FF, 8 days fresh, and at about 3 days fresh she found something to cut her right teat on . . . probably the place where she chooses to squeeze through a barbed wire fence (from which we've now removed the bottom wire) rather than walk 20 feet to go through the always-open gate. The barbed wire was already here, incidentally, and I don't expect it to keep goats contained, but it is somewhat useful for the donkeys, so I don't want to rip it out entirely.

Anyway, she got a cut just above her teat and a scratch right down the front of the teat. I soon noticed that her right side (the scratched side) was getting much bigger than the left, and thought perhaps it was sore enough that she wasn't letting her kids nurse off of it. I checked to make sure it wasn't clogged or anything, and it wasn't, but she did seem to kick at the kids once when they would start to suck on that side. She's a milk goat, that's the only reason we got her (although she makes a fantastic pet as well), so I didn't want her to dry up on that side, and I wanted to learn to milk, so I started milking that side - it was always visibly much fuller than the other side. I saw the kids drinking from the "empty" side pretty regularly, and some from the scratched/full side. After a couple of days I tried to milk the smaller side, realizing that I did want to maintain production in both sides . . . I couldn't get more than a couple of tiny squirts out. It looks fine when it comes out, nice milk, but that side feels pretty empty and the teat is smaller and I just can't get almost anything out of it.

Are the kids just emptying it out? I am leaving them on her all the time until they're a couple of weeks old. Or are they maybe drinking mostly from the scratched side, so all of her production is concentrated in that one half? I'm so confused. I'm still not good enough at milking to do it with both hands at once (or my left hand at all, really), and I have to be careful milking the scratched teat to not hurt her (she scratched it again just yesterday), so I've just been milking her one side really, but I don't know if that's the right thing to do or if it's likely to cause her other side to dry up. The scratched side gave me 1 pound of milk today, with kids on all the time and poor milking technique (still) on my part. I didn't even try the other side today because she was finished her grain by the time I finished the one side, but in previous days the production would have been more like 2 teaspoons, even when I really tried, with massage, "butting" with my hand, and trying different techniques for the actual milking part. Should I just keep trying different things? The same things in the hopes that it can bring production up? Should I concentrate on the "low production side" or the high production side, or make a point of doing both? I'm so confused.

I wish my eight-year-old experienced doe had kidded first, then I wouldn't be so worried that I would screw up her udder for life by doing something wrong now.

 

[savingdogs]

 

[Emmetts Dairy]

I think the kids are drinking from the empty side. I would put some udder balm or something on the cut udder to keep it soft and clean. And I would try your best to milk her full udder. She needs some relief Im sure.