A Milking Update

It has been two weeks since we started milking and so far everything has been running relatively smoothly. We seem to have got most of the routine down to a set time give or take a few minutes depending on how the sheep are behaving. We have a couple who are problem animals. They don't like being touched on the insides of their back legs so it makes moving their legs to clean their teats interesting to say the least. I've only been covered in iodine once, not bad really all things considered.

Over the weekend Will and I built a ramp from the main barn into the milking lane just in front of the actual entry to the milking barn. It means we have the ability to properly separate the two flocks of sheep without having to resort to pasture rotation acrobatics or the moving of sheep and the closing of multiple gates. Luring them in with pea pellets certainly help and they only need to do something a couple of times before they learn. That's one good thing about sheep, they're such good....sheep.

So we've been recording milk temperatures as well to make sure we comply with the PMO (Pasteurized Milk Ordinance) which is like the milk producers bible and is what we had to ensure all our construction plans adhered to when building. We are required to reduce the temperature to a certain level in a certain amount of time (50 F or 7 C or less within 2 hours of the completion of milking). We're freezing the milk, but a regular fridge/freezer or chest freezer doesn't have the capacity to lower the temperature fast enough, hence our purchase last year of the laboratory freezer.

On a personal level I am looking forward to the time when we can shear the sheep and the wet weather ends. Cleaning them at the moment before milking is the biggest chore.

This week we plan on starting to make some cheese finally. We're producing enough milk on a daily basis now so its just a question of exactly where we are going to go with the cheese. We have already got a list of maybe a dozen we are going to experiment with, but there are a core 3-4 we want to concentrate on. One of the lessons I have learned from other cheesemakers is that you should choose a small number to use as your starting point rather than trying to produce lots of different varieties. Only selecting a few means we can perfect the process quicker.

D-Day Arrives

Well today was an interesting day in more ways than one. But, at the end of the day we are happy to announce that everything was a success. Over the last few months we have done hundreds of calculations based on every possible variation in volume, dollar value for raw milk, laction periods, the whole nine yards. This is all done as well based on a 10/14 milking cycle. Oh the intricacies of running a dairy!

The volumes we got today are inside our minimum maximum window which means extrapolated out we will earn more than our minimum but less than our maximum assuming a price of $75 per hundred weight and the milking of 100 sheep. Of course we aren't milking that many ewes and won't be until next year at the earliest (we will have a maximum of 46 over the course of this year), but it does show that everything we have been working towards is rock solid.

Well my apologies if I have completely bored you or lost you dear reader, but this is a major step forward for us and we are very happy. For your viewing pleasure and patience here is another gratuitous lambiness photo.

T-1 and Counting

Tomorrow we start milking properly. By that I mean no more dry runs, practice runs, one sheep at a time runs or any other type of runs. Tomorrow it's 4 sheep, then the next 4 sheep until we're done and with each week from now until the end of the lambing we will be adding new ewes to the group once their lambs are 30 days old.

We have everything ready to go, we couldn't be more prepared if we tried. Last thing in place was a new stainless steel workbench for the milk room so we have somewhere to fill the bags for freezing. How much milk exactly we expect tomorrow is still something of an unknown variable and considering that volume is really what determines viability, it's hard not knowing. Sure we've done tests with single sheep, but they're all different, that's the factor that at the end of the season determines who we keep and who we say goodbye to. That's not the only factor for sure but it's a big one.

Lambing has been going well. We had one bad day last week where we lost 3 lambs. Their mother just wasn't feeding them andno matter how hard we tried, even down to feeding tubes in the stomachs, they just didn't have the will to live. All were incredibly small when they were born. Their mother's know by instinct, it's uncanny, the ones that won't survive get left. It's nature's way. It's still hard coming to terms with the fact that you just can't save some.

No problem with these little ones though, they are all at the stage now where they are running around like crazy.

So the time is coming. Tomorrow I should have a post reflecting on the first day of 'official' milking. Stay tuned!