Does anyone know how to pasterize goat milk without investing alot of cash? I don't want to buy expensive equipment for one goat. Thanks.

-- Chris Fultz (lesterslady@yahoo.com), October 05, 2000

Answers

Chris we heat treat and pasturize all our goat milk for refeeding to babies, and have done so for about 10 years now. I decided along time ago that I wouldn't use a pasturizer with the horror story of a friend of mines whos' temp was inaccurate and had to purchase back a kid crop. So....I use nesting kettles, you can usually buy 3 of them that nest together at Wallmart or Sams/Price Club. I use them as double boilers to heattreat colostrum in large batches, and use them alone to pasturize milk. One trick is that I buy 2 candy thermometers, once again Wallmart has them for less than 3$ each, and I duct tape them together, clip them on the side and make sure they both read 165 degrees. If one starts to read less than the other than I purchase a new one add it to the other two and throw away the one that reads inaccurate. No matter what I replace my thermometers each year. Make sure whatever pot you do purchase is a good grade of stainless or you will scorch your milk, for just one doe a good spegetti pot would work if you pasturize after each milking. Lehmans sells a diffuser for the top of the stove that I purchased years ago for candy making that works great for helping not to scorch your milk. Since we do pasturize some of the goodies away I do fortify our milk with whole milk fortifier a product found in the Jeffers Livestock Catalog 1800-Jeffers, when the stock is young, switching to Red Cell when they are around 4 weeks. For home/sale/chesse use I simply plunge the pot and all into cold water when the milk has reached 165, about 5 minutes later I run new cold water and frozen water jugs from the freezer to cool the milk rapidly, pour when cool into glass and refriderate. Milk is strained through stainless steel screen before and after pasturization. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), October 05, 2000.

I am curious as to why you feel the need to pasturize. If you are clean and your goat is healthy, the milk will be fine. I would suggest you read the book "The Milk of Human Kindness is not Pasurized". Very informative. Mary Fraley

-- Mary Fraley (kmfraley@orwell.net), October 06, 2000.

The answer is not simple. After 14 years in raising dairy goats I can tell you first hand that alot of what we do is guessing at best. Our testings for disease in animals of all kinds is only as accurate as the test and the person doing it. I would never purchase stock from anyone who didn't test for CAE, and who I felt comfortable with their management of the disease, because just testing is not the whole picture. If I stopped heat treating colostrum and pasturizing milk I would be out of business this December when the first person I sold to asked, "is she pasturized" if I said no, your sales are gone. A positive reading on a CAE, CL or Johnes test would mean I couldn't get a health certificate, which I need to show, export and to ship the kids on airplanes.

I also know that selling milk is a huge gamble. Milk contains bacteria in huge numbers, both good and bad, not having alot of control of the product once it leaves my farm, I want the number of bacteria as small as possible. And yes for customers I have had for years, who bring an ice chest each and every time they come and get milk, I will sell them raw milk. For our own use here for us, no I don't pasturize, but I also have milkers who are 7, 8 and 10 years old, who I raised (heat treated and pasturized) I would no more think of buying a goat and start drinking the milk raw from her than I would feed raw chicken or hamburger to my family, or not wash foreign bought produce. I absolutly agree that raw products are the best, raw milk, uncooked fruits and vegetables etc., the real problem comes from miss-information, and when you go to the feed store and purchase that sack of goatfeed to feed your goat and it is filled with animal by products and medication, you don't know enough about good vs bad hay and you may have mold on your hay which causes listerosis, you don't milk cleanly enough and your doe has subclinical staph mastits, you don't wash udders and contaminate your milk with E coli, you finish milking and instead of bring the milk right in the house to cool you clean the barn instead. Add to any of this that the goat chores especially milking is usually done by children in the home :) These are all things that pasturizing will help with.

Without knowing someone and their animals, telling them not to pasturize is probably not the best advice. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), October 06, 2000.

Vickie, telling her to pastuerize and scaring her (that's what it sounded like to me, anyway) isn't the best either. I'm not trying to attack you just saying what I think. Also in your letter it sounded like you don't pastuerize then it sounded like you did, maybe you could clear that up for me? What kind of goats do you have? We have Nubians and 1 nubian/boar buck. Are your goats as annoying as mine are, please tell me they are?! Happy homesteading to you and your family!

-- megan milliken (millikenfarm@altavista.com), October 11, 2000.

Hi Megan, no I do not pasturise the milk for my own family. And no I do not reccomend new folks to drink unpasturised milk from their new stock. On the other thread about this the gal was feeding her family that included very small children unpasturised milk from a cow she had just purchased, now she knows it has been tested for TB and knows more about the health of this cow. I think some folks need to be scared a little to understand that lots of things we do on the homestead, though safe as pie in the olden days is not the safest thing now. Not understanding medications and withdrawl times, not understanding the "stuff" in your feed, and lets be honest here, most folks sheds for milking their stock isn't the cleanest inviornment for bringing in safe milk for the family. So yes, I do say pasturise. Once you have raised your own stock for awhile and learned, then you have enough information to make an informed choice. I know my view is not popular on this, my e-mail box contained a few comments on this, but if I make even one person think........................Also I answered Chris's question in the vein that he may be pasturising for disease prevention in his herd.

I of course have Nubians, 3 token LaMancha's left over from my daughter showing them for 10 years. Loud isn't the word for the Nubians :) Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), October 12, 2000.

It's pasteurize folks! And yes I did have to look it up in the dictionary for spelling.

-- evelyn Bergdoll (evandjim@klink.net), October 15, 2000.

this is shit

-- simon robert david hancox (robert_david2002@yahoo.com), January 28, 2002.