Wanch Dairy goes high-tech!

Early morning chores begin with feeding the cats (and dogs). K8 has the outside chores this week. Looks like he stayed up rather late last night.

Because Darlin's teats are so small and difficult to hand milk, I stretched the budget and bought a milking machine. As a result, milk production has greatly increased and the amount of time on the milking process has greatly decreased. Are the boys happy with this improvement?

K8 nodding off and catching 20 winks while on the job looks like valid proof. 

With winter coming, we would prefer to milk inside the barn, but the step-up through the shed door is too much for the cows. It was a piece of cake for the goats. So we will cover the front of shed with plywood to block the wind and continue inside the shed - burrrrrr! The new milking machine (bought used) is actually designed to milk 2 cows at once. We will start milking Heidi within a week, but first need to build a head stanchion to hold her steady for milking since she has never been milked - should be exciting. 

Clean-up and sanitizing, while not as fast as just washing your hands, is pretty quick and easy.