The Care and Milking of Goats

I’ve spent much of the past few days (as a paying guest of the agriturismo rather than a “WWOOFer”) attending the Slow Food “Cheese!” festival in Bra, Italy, about 30 km from here.  So I’m definitely not an expert on this, but I’ll lay out what I understand about milking.

 



The milking season is about to end because the grazing is getting sparse now, but for now the animals are still milked twice a day.  Five at time, they climb up onto a waist-high platform, which has a feeding trough behind bars that hold their necks in place, their hind ends facing the open side of the platform.   Check out the sheep crowding the gate to to milking area!





 

 

Here's the milker's view!  Unlike cows, who get milked from the side, with sheep and goats the milker stands behind them, directing the stream (hopefully) into small buckets.   The milk is then poured into a larger jug, filtering through a cheese cloth to keep out the flies, the straw, the hairs, etc.  Don’t worry:  it will be filtered again before the cheese is made!



The goats and sheep all start in the barn, on separate sides, where they had been kept overnight.  After the sheep are milked, each group of 5 exits the barn into the fenced barn lot.  Next, it's the goats' turn, in the same five-at-a-time setup.   The smaller goats are wandering the middle aisle all the while, looking for attention or something nibble on, maybe your jeans.  Notice that the sheep are trying to reach back into the barn from the outside to get something else to eat!

The sheep produce very little milk (maybe 1/3 cup per ewe?) compared to the goats, who can produce half a liter during the prime milking season (spring).  The goats are also easier to milk than the sheep, partly because their udders are bigger and, in my opinion, partly because they seem less skittish.  While the animals are being milked, they’re also fed in the troughs behind the bars that hold their heads in place.  The goats figure out where the empty slots are as they’re climbing up onto the platform; the sheep, not so much.

And here's a milker you might recognize. 

The animals are pastured afterward for several hours, morning and evening.  There’s a 28-year-old Italian shepherd here named Andrea who’s in charge of the animals and the milking, and he decides every day where the best grass is (a challenge at this time of year) and moves the goats and sheep there, letting them wander around for the duration. 

The shepherd is a pretty  interesting guy:  first of all, shepherding is a not a lifestyle too many people are choosing these days.   Andrea had been a WWOOFer on this farm and later decided to buy property that’s adjacent.   It seems quite popular for Italians to WWOOF in their own country, maybe it’s an economic decision.  At any rate, the cost of living in this area is very low, and I suspect that land is fairly reasonable.  In fact, the buildings on this farm are part of an almost-abandoned community of perhaps ten houses.   For reasons that I’m not clear on, Andrea (who is from a northern town) bought a horse in the southern-most part of Italy, along with ten goats.  To transport his newly-purchased livestock,  he spent six months riding his way north, bringing the goats.  He said he’d chosen to take six months so that he could meet and talk to people along the way and learning more about shepherding.

Here's a few shots from pasturing.  Note the goat who's eating the tree leaves, standing on two hind legs.  They can go through a grove of young trees like a swarm of locusts!