Udderly wonderful

It took us a while to figure out the whole milking thing with Ping. When we first got her, her milk tasted AWFUL! A really bitter, chemically kind of taste. I contacted the breeder we bought her from who was very puzzled about that, but later she contacted me and said she had tried the milk from her remaining goats and found their milk to have the same bad taste. So she walked her pasture and found a patch of wild onion growing that the goats had been happily munching. That seems to have been what it was, because after about 2 weeks Ping's milk tasted fine. It sure took a long time for that to get out of her system! Plus we had to keep Poppet separate from Ping overnight so we could milk her in the morning, otherwise Poppet (formerly Dora) would drink all the milk and leave very little for us.

Anyway, I thought I would post pics of her udder and Lillys as a comparison. Remember Lilly is an older goat, Ping is a first freshener two year old.  The photos were taken in the morning, when the goats had full udders.

First Lilly:

So she's not going to win any prizes for her udder, but her teats are nice hand sized teats and the orifices are nice and big.  The right side of her udder holds more milk, so she's kind of lopsided.  Easy milker, she stand on the stand without trouble as long as she has food :)

Okay, now Ping:

Comparing the two I'm sure you can understand why it took us some adjusting to milking her!  Her teats point out so far they touch her legs and her teats are tiny compared to Lilly.  With Lilly I can use my whole hand to milk, with Ping I have to use two or three fingers instead.  Her left teat is longer, but the right side of her udder holds twice as much milk as the left.  Now I'm not saying she's a terrible milk goat, far from!  She stand beautifully on the stand and her orifices are nice sized as well, AND I know the udder of a FF will improve with time.  We are very happy with her.  

And the result of the morning milking from Ping:

That's a 1/2 gallon jar.  Some of that is foam, so it's not as full as it looks... but is that awesome or what!?  As you can see, the right side of her udder stays lopsided even when empty.  I'm not sure if that will change next year or if that's how she'll always be.  Overall we're very happy with her.  She's quite sweet :)  (Sorry about the messy stand, since these were taken we have started leaving a small broom in there to clean off the stand before each milking.)