…Because anyone who has milked a cow knows there is no time to check Facebook, take a phone call or surf the web. This is a task that you have to be all in on, and frankly, I never really thought about the physical labor.
Since Mabel had a week old baby on her now, I felt like a day of ‘no milking’ was a little more justified. I relieved some pressure with my small goat milker while the new baby relieved the other side.
I had found the machine milker a month or two prior but felt that if I had gotten it any earlier, it may have deterred me from trying to accomplish the task with my hands. Plus, they cost a pretty penny and if I was gonna get it, it better be a “have-to-have”!
I had high hopes for this machine. I will straight up tell you, it met all of them! I would kiss the man who made it, if he were still alive.
There are two parts, the vacuum pump and the actual milker.
Take a look at ol’ Ed.
Ed, is the vacuum pump. He looks quite easy to wheel, which makes it ever so handy, but Ed is in fact sturdy and not easily maneuverable. However, he does the job like a workhorse and sounds like one too. There is a set pressure and two valves to pump air through (in the crazy instance I decide to milk TWO cows). This machine will milk out 4 gallons of milk in 10 minutes flat. Easy Peasy. He doesn’t do all the work alone though…
Meet Bethy…and her lil’ red wagon.
She can hold roughly 7 gallons of milk and her claw milks all four teats at once. The claw also pulsates to mimic how a cow would naturally nurse and is gentle enough to not cause any damage.
Mabel never flinched. She may have tried to nudge it once, but from that day on, she was one happy cow. We are finished milking before she is finished eating. Want to see this awesome thing in action?
(This video is proof that even the inexperienced can use it…aka…my backup Milker….aka my husband!)
Video: Nupulse Milker
The only ‘Con’ to this process is clearly you have to clean it. The good news is, it still does most of the work, but if you are like me and have hot water “back at the house” you may have to do a little towing. I also found an old stainless steel 3 compartment restaurant sink for $100 bucks that fit the job perfectly. In basin one goes warm water, basin two goes hot soapy water and basin three a warm/hot rinse. While quite a few people make their own soap concoction, I am not brave enough to mess with ‘food grade quality’. It is so important to clean thoroughly and the proper soap will do just that, especially with milk that may or may not leave a residue. This is also why its important to use a stainless steel sink as milk remnants can crystalize and may also seep into plastics and other materials. The cleaning process takes about 10 minutes but with hauling, pouring milk into jars and cleaning up, its about 20 minutes total. When cleaning, the entire system is utilized just as it would be for milking. With the unit on and the claw in one basin, it will draw up all of the water. I empty after each basin and scrub with the soapy water. It does the collecting, I do the dumping. Some have great success using 5 gallon buckets for this process (that is how we originally started).
As I mentioned earlier, this is an investment. This system alone can cost over $2000 but depending on what you have to invest and what you are going to do with it in the future, it may or may not make be worth it. Granted, the system includes the cleaning detergent, wipes for the ol’ girls udder, and other fancy testing elements…all of which I have used. To me, it’s worth its weight in gold.
