*Thanks for the video!* I've only ever milked an animal once, a *LOOOONNNNGGG* time ago, and that was a goat for just a couple of minutes. I remember thinking at the time that the process was much harder to do well than the ease with which milking was depicted in Hollywood movies and on television shows. That being said, I, too, am a lover of efficiency, and I can well appreciate the trade-off in having to clean the milking equipment, versus the speed with which a vacuum pump removes the milk from the cow. I can fully understand the need for both methodologies, especially if the electric grid fails, and then hand milking skills would be mandatory.
Thanks for the video. We are new to cows and bought a cow on July 4 and it’s now after Labor Day. We’re going to take her to the butcher this Friday. We found out that she had been pregnant late Thursday and she calfed on Saturday. We’re looking to milk her now. Thank you again.
This is awesome!!! We are actually looking into buying this same surge belly milker. But we can’t find a link to the bucket and belly claw, with that small and affordable vacuum pump. Hamby only has this CRAZY expensive pump on wheels. Do you know where you bought your system?
Hamby's option is WILDLY expensive. We have ours on extended loan from a neighbor friend. I think your best bet would be to scour Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, as well as contacting ALL the small-scale farmers in your area. Maybe someone has one buried in a basement somewhere?
@@jmilkslinger ok gotcha. Thank you very much for your input. Yea people on the Keeping a Family Milk Cow FB group are saying that we should expect to spend $2000 and more. And yikes, that is just a heavy pill to swallow. Good to know that there might be other options. Thanks a bunch!
@@jmilkslinger With this type milker you don’t need compressor to wash it, I like it so much! Where i can purchase one like this? I saw similar, but with long hoses, that one will require hot water in milking barn to wash it, and I don’t have water leave alone hot water in my barn.
@@Lena-ko5xf They have something similar at Hamby Dairy: hambydairysupply.com/surge-family-cow-bucket-milker-complete-1-cow-system-with-clear-liners-larger-pump/ Super expensive, though! (We have ours on loan from a friend.)
That part is called "the pulsator" and it's what controls the vacuum --- it switches between suction and squeezing the inflation. You don't want water getting in it, so he removed it when cleaning the rest of the milker.
You leave a heifer on the cow until the heifer is in heat? Something wrong with this picture. Another thing- cows need to milk for 10 months then 2 months dry off. And her calf is now in heat?
@jmilkslinger As someone who worked in bakeries and restaurants for over 20 years, I can state with absolute authority that at least 75% of the laws on the books regarding sanitation and food safety in the United States of America, from a state and federal government perspective, which is where 99% of those food and safety laws have originated; are on the books because of the ultra-large-scale, industrialized means by which vegetables, fungi, fruits, nuts, and animal foods are harvested, processed, preserved, packaged, converted into processed foods, canned, bottled, boxed, shrink-wrapped, vacuum packaged, made room temperature shelf stable, refrigerated, frozen, transported, and delivered to the end-user consumer from field-to-table. It is the extremely large scale of industrialized food production where the simplest of mistakes, which in an ordinary, everyday, small-scale, homestead type of food producing scenario seldom ends up becoming an infectious vector; that from a bacterial, viral, or prion perspective, can, and often will, in an industrialized food processing, manufacturing, distribution, and commercial restaurant cooking scenario end up infecting large numbers of American people, hospitalinzing them, with death often the result. There's a great UA-cam channel dedicated to analyzing the various aspects of commercial aviation where various aspects of human nature led to a near or actual disaster where a lot of people ended up dying when a jet airplane crashed. That UA-cam channel is titled, *Mentour Pilot,* and is hosted by *Petter Hornfeldt,* a Swedish-born man who still currently flies as a captain for Ryan Air. My point here is that in many of Mr. Hornfeldt's videos on commercial jet airline crash tragedies, he mentions the *"SWISS CHEESE"* model that the airline industry utilizes to attempt to determine the reasons why any airline accident has occurred. This includes all near accidents, an actual accident without any loss of life, and those accidents where a loss of life has occurred. In essence, the *"Swiss Cheese"* model is nothing more than all of the human failures in a commercial airline accident scenario, from the very beginning until the exact time, often measured in seconds because of the Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder recovered information, when the accident was no longer avoidable, if analyzed individually, most, if not all, of the individual human errors that led up to causing a jet airplane to crash would not have on their own caused the crash. It is only when the totality of the number of human errors is known; when each error is represented by a slice of Swiss cheese, and when the holes in the Swiss cheese slices all align perfectly to allow a metaphorical arrow to pass through the total number of slices of cheese unrestricted. In an ordinary, small-scale food production model, which is exactly what your 5-acre homestead represents, there are *VERY FEW* individual human beings whose minds and hands are responsible for day-to-day food sanitation and safety. Regarding @wethen5480's concerns regarding your husband's sanitation methodology for cleaning the 4 individual teats on your dairy cow's udders, I venture to speculate that any bacterial growth on one of Daisy's teats is exactly the same as any bacterial growth on the other 3 teats. Not utilizing 4 separate iodine saturated wipes for each individual teat of Daisy's udder is where @wethen5480 is directing his/her criticism. Utilizing the *"Swiss Cheese Model"* I will offer my opinion that because your husband does not utilize a separate iodine wipe/cloth for each teat does not increase the chances of Daisy contracting mastitis in any significant way. She is not being milked in a commercial dairy where the sheer volume of dropped feces, fly vectors, other insect vectors, viruses, bacteria, and general poor environmental conditions are exponentially worse from every possible perspective. In addition, from the various videos that you have posted on your UA-cam channel that illustrate either of your cow's being milked, I came to the conclusion that neither cow spends very much time in that tiny milking shed, other than when they are actually being milked. The shed appears to be quite clean, with no evidence that I could detect, of poor sanitation such as obvious piles of straw laden manure. As a result, this former chef, slash sciences and biology nerd, is willing to speculate that the conditions in your milking shed are not conducive to the development of mastitis in either of your dairy cow's udders.
*Thanks for the video!*
I've only ever milked an animal once, a *LOOOONNNNGGG* time ago, and that was a goat for just a couple of minutes. I remember thinking at the time that the process was much harder to do well than the ease with which milking was depicted in Hollywood movies and on television shows.
That being said, I, too, am a lover of efficiency, and I can well appreciate the trade-off in having to clean the milking equipment, versus the speed with which a vacuum pump removes the milk from the cow. I can fully understand the need for both methodologies, especially if the electric grid fails, and then hand milking skills would be mandatory.
Interesting, I vaguely remember the sound of one of those old milkers. I loved the mooing. Nice piece! That's a lot of milk in that little of time!
Thanks for the video. We are new to cows and bought a cow on July 4 and it’s now after Labor Day. We’re going to take her to the butcher this Friday. We found out that she had been pregnant late Thursday and she calfed on Saturday. We’re looking to milk her now. Thank you again.
Oh wow! That's quite the surprise!!
This is awesome!!! We are actually looking into buying this same surge belly milker. But we can’t find a link to the bucket and belly claw, with that small and affordable vacuum pump.
Hamby only has this CRAZY expensive pump on wheels.
Do you know where you bought your system?
Hamby's option is WILDLY expensive. We have ours on extended loan from a neighbor friend. I think your best bet would be to scour Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, as well as contacting ALL the small-scale farmers in your area. Maybe someone has one buried in a basement somewhere?
@@jmilkslinger ok gotcha. Thank you very much for your input.
Yea people on the Keeping a Family Milk Cow FB group are saying that we should expect to spend $2000 and more. And yikes, that is just a heavy pill to swallow.
Good to know that there might be other options. Thanks a bunch!
I am all about the machine!
Great video
Thank you for the video! I’m looking into buying a milking machine. What’s the make of yours?
Surge Belly (bucket?) Milker
@@jmilkslinger With this type milker you don’t need compressor to wash it, I like it so much! Where i can purchase one like this? I saw similar, but with long hoses, that one will require hot water in milking barn to wash it, and I don’t have water leave alone hot water in my barn.
@@Lena-ko5xf They have something similar at Hamby Dairy: hambydairysupply.com/surge-family-cow-bucket-milker-complete-1-cow-system-with-clear-liners-larger-pump/
Super expensive, though! (We have ours on loan from a friend.)
Since your husband is lactose intolerant have you looked into A2 milk and A2 line of milk cattle? Supposedly A2 is easier to digest.
Yes and yes and....stay tuned!!
@@jmilkslinger oh my goodness, I just read your article about Emma when I was looking for your weekly quotidian.
Fantastic
Can you share what are the inflation tubes you said he had to take off to clean?
That part is called "the pulsator" and it's what controls the vacuum --- it switches between suction and squeezing the inflation. You don't want water getting in it, so he removed it when cleaning the rest of the milker.
@@jmilkslinger aaahhh that makes sense!
I would imagine the milker would be more sanitary than milking by hand.
You leave a heifer on the cow until the heifer is in heat? Something wrong with this picture. Another thing- cows need to milk for 10 months then 2 months dry off. And her calf is now in heat?
Uses the same towel area to wash all 4 teats. I suppose you people know what mastitis looks like.
@@wethen5480 Actually, we don't! We know the signs, but we've never seen it in real life since none of our cows have ever had it.
@jmilkslinger As someone who worked in bakeries and restaurants for over 20 years, I can state with absolute authority that at least 75% of the laws on the books regarding sanitation and food safety in the United States of America, from a state and federal government perspective, which is where 99% of those food and safety laws have originated; are on the books because of the ultra-large-scale, industrialized means by which vegetables, fungi, fruits, nuts, and animal foods are harvested, processed, preserved, packaged, converted into processed foods, canned, bottled, boxed, shrink-wrapped, vacuum packaged, made room temperature shelf stable, refrigerated, frozen, transported, and delivered to the end-user consumer from field-to-table.
It is the extremely large scale of industrialized food production where the simplest of mistakes, which in an ordinary, everyday, small-scale, homestead type of food producing scenario seldom ends up becoming an infectious vector; that from a bacterial, viral, or prion perspective, can, and often will, in an industrialized food processing, manufacturing, distribution, and commercial restaurant cooking scenario end up infecting large numbers of American people, hospitalinzing them, with death often the result.
There's a great UA-cam channel dedicated to analyzing the various aspects of commercial aviation where various aspects of human nature led to a near or actual disaster where a lot of people ended up dying when a jet airplane crashed. That UA-cam channel is titled, *Mentour Pilot,* and is hosted by *Petter Hornfeldt,* a Swedish-born man who still currently flies as a captain for Ryan Air.
My point here is that in many of Mr. Hornfeldt's videos on commercial jet airline crash tragedies, he mentions the *"SWISS CHEESE"* model that the airline industry utilizes to attempt to determine the reasons why any airline accident has occurred. This includes all near accidents, an actual accident without any loss of life, and those accidents where a loss of life has occurred.
In essence, the *"Swiss Cheese"* model is nothing more than all of the human failures in a commercial airline accident scenario, from the very beginning until the exact time, often measured in seconds because of the Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder recovered information, when the accident was no longer avoidable,
if analyzed individually, most, if not all, of the individual human errors that led up to causing a jet airplane to crash would not have on their own caused the crash.
It is only when the totality of the number of human errors is known; when each error is represented by a slice of Swiss cheese, and when the holes in the Swiss cheese slices all align perfectly to allow a metaphorical arrow to pass through the total number of slices of cheese unrestricted.
In an ordinary, small-scale food production model, which is exactly what your 5-acre homestead represents, there are *VERY FEW* individual human beings whose minds and hands are responsible for day-to-day food sanitation and safety.
Regarding @wethen5480's concerns regarding your husband's sanitation methodology for cleaning the 4 individual teats on your dairy cow's udders, I venture to speculate that any bacterial growth on one of Daisy's teats is exactly the same as any bacterial growth on the other 3 teats. Not utilizing 4 separate iodine saturated wipes for each individual teat of Daisy's udder is where @wethen5480 is directing his/her criticism. Utilizing the *"Swiss Cheese Model"*
I will offer my opinion that because your husband does not utilize a separate iodine wipe/cloth for each teat does not increase the chances of Daisy contracting mastitis in any significant way. She is not being milked in a commercial dairy where the sheer volume of dropped feces, fly vectors, other insect vectors, viruses, bacteria, and general poor environmental conditions are exponentially worse from every possible perspective. In addition, from the various videos that you have posted on your UA-cam channel that illustrate either of your cow's being milked, I came to the conclusion that neither cow spends very much time in that tiny milking shed, other than when they are actually being milked. The shed appears to be quite clean, with no evidence that I could detect, of poor sanitation such as obvious piles of straw laden manure. As a result, this former chef, slash sciences and biology nerd, is willing to speculate that the conditions in your milking shed are not conducive to the development of mastitis in either of your dairy cow's udders.
Your husband is very thorough, with his cleaning of udders and milking equipment.
iodine after surely