Making dairy manageable with alternative milking schedules

Often while milking I make up parody songs about goats. My favorite this fall has been about my milking schedule:

Milking 9 to 5 doing dairy to fit your schedule workin’ other jobs Not all goatin’ and all farmin'

I would miss some fun Going home to do the milking It’s enough to drive you Crazy if you let it Parody of Dolly Parton’s Working 9 to 5

When I first start milking goats the milking schedule would really get to me after a few months and I would dry up all the does after show season ended. I made some attempts at milk test, but never was really able to finish a whole lactation. This year at one point I put most of my goats on once a day milking, but was depressed at the difference in quantity of milk. That is when I decided to stop trying to be perfect. The only milking schedules are not either once a day or 12 hours perfectly apart. For me milking at 9am and 5pm is a schedule that works well for my lifestyle.

Goats lined up in our milk stand. We generally milk 5 or 6 at a time.

Milking Schedules

If you research milking schedules around the world you’ll see that there are a wide variety of them. Different cultures and farms prioritize maximizing production and profit, improving worker life styles, and other potential variables. I’ve spoiled the ending here by announcing my milking schedule. I’m going to go through a few of the more common ones. These schedule generally have been only studied in cows. I think the cow schedules should work okay for goats as well. Some of the names of these sound like sports plays, but I’ll break down what they really mean.

2AD milking

Twice a day milking is the most common of all the milking schedules. Typically milkings occur roughly 12 hours apart every day on this schedule.

OAD milking

Once a day milking in my experience is the most common alternative milk schedule. There is some reduce in production with this. I’ve never stuck at it long enough for my goats to settle out and see what the real reduction in production is. I have seen others suggest 75%-80% of what they might produce on 2AD milking. Wild in Wild Farm is another breeder that focuses on OAD milking as it works best for their lifestyle.

3AD milking

I personally haven’t heard of anyone in my goat circles doing three times a day milking. The exception to this is for major shows such as Nationals. In that case though they are focused on a specific even. My understanding is there are cow dairies that milk three times a day, but like any milking schedule there are trade-offs.

16:8 interval milking

The sixteen and eight milking schedule is actually what I’m doing when I milk at 9am and 5pm. I didn’t learn about this schedule until after I had switched. One of the down sides of this schedule is it takes longer to milk in the morning, which might matter in a commercial operation but for me it is a difference of a few minutes to 20 minutes depending on how many goats I’m milking.

10-in-7 Milking

Now we are getting into the more “exotic” milking schedules. 10-in-7 stands for ten milkings in 7 days. This system can be scheduled such that there is only a once daily milking on the weekends, giving a better schedule for staff/family at a commercial operation. Typically the schedule is 2AD on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday milkings are OAD. I wasn’t able to find any information about a farm using this schedule with goats, but it is utilized in some cow dairies. Sometimes this schedule isn’t put in place until later in lactation, similarly to many goat herds that do 2AD for much of the year and switch to OAD later in lactation.

3-in-2 Milking

A similar style milking schedule to the 10-in-7 is the 3-in-2. As you may have surmised this is short for 3 milkings in 2 days. The idea behind this style is it reduces the overall milkings, but does not reduce the milk produced as greatly as OAD milking. In this schedule the milkings occur 12 hours apart, 18 hours apart and 18 hours apart. On the third day it rests to 12-18-18 (the short hand for this schedule).

Why the 9-to-5 schedule works for me

The reason I went through all these schedules was to show it is important to find a schedule that works for you. Milking any dairy animal is a big commitment and you have to decide what is important to you. I’m not sure how some of these schedules would work for milk test other than the OAD, 2AD and 3AD schedules, you’d need to check with your lab if you were going to try one.

I work remotely for a global organization and the 9-to-5 works for me as I’m able to start work at 6am and put in almost a full day before I milk. Morning milking time is my lunch break/farm chore time. I then return to work and finish out the day. Some of the more complicated schedules while interesting to me wouldn’t work as having the same schedule Monday - Friday and keeping up milk production are the two variables most important to me.

Katniss getting her final bites in when I was late for the 9am milking recently