Goat's Milk

When you start a dairy herd, of course you end up with lots of milk (well, for at least most of the year). Of course, one goat gives more milk than one (human) kid can drink. In fact, none of our human kids live at home any more, and one goat gives more milk than the two of us drink, cook with, use on cereal, etc. We don't have a production herd, meaning we don't sell goat's milk commercially or to a dairy. We do get lots of milk, though. If you have a dairy goat, you have to figure out something to do with all the milk.

After each milking, we strain our milk through a milk filter, then put it in half gallon jugs which we then freeze it. We do stock up milk for use during the "dry" time of year. You'll get more milk than what your freezer will hold if you try to freeze it all.

I searched the internet. We pored over my collection of cook books which go WAY back. (I have cook books from as far back as the late 1800's and early 1900's.) I scoured the local stores -- country stores, farm markets, etc. We picked the brains of other dairy goat keepers. What we found was extremely simple.

You can use goat's milk in any way that you would use cow's milk. In other words, if the recipe calls for a cup of milk, just use a cup of milk. It doesn't have as much butterfat as cow's milk, but it's a lot easier to digest. You can take the cream out if you have a cream separator. Some goats give milk with more butterfat than others (just like cows). In the process of searching, though, we also found lots of cheese recipes and tons of other stuff. I have learned to make Mozzarella cheese, ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, cultures for cheese making, goat's milk fudge, yogurt, and more. I even made up a few recipes of my own. I learned that making cheese *SOUNDS* harder than it is. Making yogurt is not intimidating. Every batch of something doesn't turn out perfect. If it turns out really bad, well -- the pigs will eat about anything. I am going to post recipes in this section, and so I'll eventually make a page for each recipe.