Our milking doe, Hazelnut, had gotten pregnant again. I estimate she is due either in June or July. Since she is due soon, I made the decision to dry her off, out, or up. LOL. It seems like people call it different things.

What does drying her off mean? It means to stop the milk production. However, I didn’t do it cold turkey. It took me 10 days to dry her off. It was way easier than I thought!

Of course, I did research on what other people did. There are so many different ways out there. I think you have to find what’s going to work best for you and your goat. The ultimate goal in drying off your goat is to make sure she doesn’t get mastitis. Mastitis is where the udder is red/pink, engorged, and can lead to infection. I decided I wanted to just milk her less every day and then go from milking two times a day to one time again.

Each time I milked Hazelnut she gave us 1 1/2 Cup milk. In the beginning of drying her off, I would only milk out a cup. As the days went on, I would milk out a little less each time. Towards the end I was only milking out a 1/4 cup but also milking her once a day.

Friday night we had a thunder storm so I decided to not milk her that night. The next morning I milked her. Then Saturday night I skipped. Sunday morning I milked her while skipping Sunday night. Monday morning I did not milk her. That was the end of milking (for now!).

Here is the video of me explaining what I did: