I think it’s safe to say that everybody who owns milk goats has had to deal with a kicker on the milk stand. This can be incredibly frustrating, and I personally hate to see wasted milk.
Why Does My Doe Kick?
This can come down to inexperience if the doe was never trained to the milk stand prior to being in milk. Though I have owned does that I’d never put on the milk stand until they were in milk, and they did just fine. I think dominance can play a role too. Our worst goat on the milk stand was also the queen bee of the herd. After we sold the doe, one of our other does became the new girl in charge. This doe, who previously wasn’t too bad on the milk stand. was suddenly horrible on the stand to the point of screaming.
Method #1 Tying Back Leg(s)
This is the typical method you’ll see where the does legs are tied by individual lines so that they can’t kick their legs forward towards the milk pan. In most cases this should work, and it worked for our girl for the first couple of years before she got really bad. She started kicking and screaming and sometimes would succeed at kicking the milk pan over anyway.
Method #2 Hobbling
After weeks of dealing with kicking and screaming we found a new method (new to us anyway). My husband discovered this method when he was watching a documentary. In the documentary, he noticed a scene in which a cow was hobbled at its hocks in order to not kick while being milked. He gave this method a try right away on our trouble girl and it worked beautifully. There was no more kicking and no more screaming, just peace and quiet. They key is tying the legs close enough together, so they focus on balancing vs kicking. Plus, when they try to lift one leg, it’s going to tug on the other.
I’d love to hear how hobbling works for you vs simply tying the legs back. I’m sure for some “special spirits”, they may need both. I’ve only ever really seen one video on hobbling that wasn’t working very well but I got to wonder had they gotten the legs closer together would it have worked? It can also be difficult finding hobbles to fit a mini goat but a slip leash like we used works just as well.
Recommended Products (clickable)
