Building our Goat Milking Stand

Lots of times I wonder, "What would we do without a computer?"  A perfect example occurred the other day.  We had just purchased Nellie, our dairy goat, and I wanted to build a milking stand for her.  How do I do that?  So I went to Google and typed, How to build a goat milking stand and hit enter.  I got 275,000 hits.  Wow.

I perused maybe the top ten hits and found some very informative "How To" instructions, complete with diagrams, a detailed list of lumber and other hardware to build it.  I'm far from being a carpenter.  These plans made it so very simple as it coached you through pre-cutting all lumber and pre-drilling all holes.  The instructions were clear and easy and there were nice drawings to confirm that you were heading in the right direction.

Plans for the Goat Milking Stand

So with all my pre-cut lumber in one spot, I began to put together first the frame of the stand.


Beginnings of the frame

I enlisted Russ' help and he assisted me in putting it together.  Below we have the legs on the stand and it is taking shape.

Nellie's stand is coming together

The milking stand has a stanchion on the front to hold the goat's head while she's being milked.  It is an ingenious design as both of the stanchion bars pivot on 3/4 inch wooden dowels.  You can't really see in the photo, but the top of the stanchion bars have a 3/8 inch hole drilled through all three 2 x 4's.  I've used a 3/8 inch wooden dowel rod that is 6 inches long with a 1 1/2 inch 2 x 2 glued to the end as a knob to act as a locking mechanism to lock the stanchion closed once her head is in place. 

The stanchion in place

Here is the (almost) finished product with the floor in place and the feed box built.  Putting a little feed in the box entices Nellie to jump up onto the stand to be milked.

Floor on & Feed box built

I needed to see if it worked so I had Benjamin test it out.  I asked him to pretend that he was Nellie and put his head through the stanchion.  I then locked it down.  Like stocks in the Old West, it worked like a charm.  This thing has promise.  Please note that Benjamin was a willing participant in this exercise.  I don't want Child Protective Services knocking on my door.


Front view

The side view gives a good angle of the stanchion bars pivoting on the dowels and also the locking mechanism at the top.

Side view (Please note his smile!)

Finally, Benjamin models the stanchion with the feed box on.  This is gonna work! 

Feed box

We brought it out to the barn to test it out on Nellie.  We discovered that the feed box was too big and bulky.  We merely pulled the milking stand up to the panel separating two stalls in the barn and let her eat out of her normal little trough that we placed higher on the livestock panel.

Looks like it is working nicely

Here is a frontal view of what I was trying to describe about the feed trough.

And here is where the work gets done.  Tricia is milking Nellie while she eats.  She milks directly into a jar with a cloth that has been rubber banded around the mouth that serves as a filter.

Milking Nellie

We'll drink the milk, make goat milk kefir, goat cheese and try our hand at making goat milk soap.  This is a learning experience for us, but will be fun (and challenging) I'm sure.