Dairy Goats

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Meet the dairy goats on our homestead!

We currently have two Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats. They are sweet and adorable and great with the kids (the human ones)!

Pinterest Graphic with three images. First image is a brown and white mama Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goat and a white/black/brown newborn goat kid standing next to her. Top Right image is a pint mason jar half full of goat milk. Bottom right image is a grazing white/black/brown goat kid. Text below says "Our life with dairy goats" from Our life with purpose.

Our Life With Dairy Goats

We have a mama and baby Nigerian Dwarf set that we bought a few months ago from a family that needed to re-home them. I grew up with goats, but we never had any in milk. We only had wethers (castrated males) as pets and brush clearers. So I have always loved goats and planned to get more someday. My oldest daughter can only have goat milk right now and it is really expensive! So when I found an ad on craigslist for a mama and baby at a very reasonable price, we prayed about it and we quickly jumped on it!

The Mama Goat

Delilah is our mama goat. She is really the sweetest thing, though she is a first time freshener (first time mama) and a bit of a pill on the milk stand! We do what is called, “Dam Raising” so we only have to milk her once a day.

Dam raising is really nice because because the mama (dam) and baby (kid) only have to be separated at night and we milk her first thing in the morning. Then the baby is able to drink milk throughout the day.

This also works well when we are gone for the weekend or unable to milk some mornings because we can leave baby with mama and she keeps her milked for us. Another reason we are doing dam raising is because we only have two goats right now. Goats are very social animals and need to have at least two of them together. When we separate them overnight, Josie just has a little pen inside the barn, so she can still be with Delilah but without nursing.

Brown and white goat with her front hooves standing up on a fence and smelling a rope leash hanging from the post.

The Baby Goat

Josie is our spunky little kid goat! She was only about a month old when we got them and was a little skittish around us at first, but she got over that pretty quickly. They both love people and snuggles and scratches and are great around the kids (I mean tiny humans).

We hope to have Josie and Delilah bred towards the end of the year so we can keep getting milk.

White and black baby goat grazing on some clovers in a field.

The Barn

When we first brought these goats home, we had to build a temporary house for them in our kid’s play yard until we could build a more permanent place for them to live.

A family friend gave us an old greenhouse they didn’t need anymore, so we brought that home and set it up.

Josie and Delilah share this new barn with our chickens. We have deep bedding in the barn and there is a fenced run that goes all the way around the back of it. The goats and chickens are divided so we can switch sides once a week or so. The chickens tend to dig up the grass a lot faster than the goats. That’s why we rotate them. Then the grass has some time to grow back while the goats are on the side the chickens were on and the chickens scratch and naturally compost the goat feces on the side the goats were on. So they basically clean up after each other, if that makes sense!

Goats need a lot of brush in their diet. We also have a little portable grazing pen that we put the goats in during the day. This also gives them some nice shade to hang out in when it is hot.

Hoop house barn with the door propped open

inside the hoop house barn with a fence down the center and chickens on the far side.

Inside the hoop house barn. Milking stand in the corner.

Two photos side by side before and after of goats in a grazing pen clearing brush. — This is a before and after being in this pen for just one or two days. See how much they cleared!

Brown and white Dairy Goat climbing on a vertical pallet in a play yard with a slide and swings in the background — Delilah on their climbing pallets while they were still in our kid’s play yard.

Mama and baby Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats snuggling in the dirt in the sun. — Afternoon naptime in the play yard before they moved to their new digs.

The Milking Stand

My hubby built a beautiful milking stand for us. He used plans from DIY Danielle’s post ‘How to Make a Milking Stand for Nigerian Dwarf Goats‘. They worked out great! We went with a removeable feed bucket (yes, my daughter picked HOT pink!) on the front for easy cleaning. This is the perfect size for our girl. Delilah is not super excited about being milked, but she does like her snacks on the stand!

Finished milking stand on the floor in a garage. Hot pink grain bucket on the front

This is the feeder bucket we used, although they don’t appear to have as many colors as they used to.

AND The Milk

Nigerian Dwarf Goat milk has a high butterfat content. This makes their milk rich, creamy, and sweet! We all love it! The pictures below are from our very first milking with Delilah. We now get a little more milk, but since we only milk once a day we still only get a little under one pint per day. Also with only one baby, she doesn’t have a huge demand on her milk supply. Supposedly Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats can produce up to two quarts of milk per day.

Goat milk is naturally homogenized. This means the cream doesn’t separate and collect at the top the way cow milk does. Some day when when we are getting more milk per day, we hope to get a cream separator. Then we would be able to make more things like butter and ice cream! For now we are enjoying drinking the milk raw and cooking and baking with it.

Mason jar with goat milk in it and a stainless steel strainer funnel on top sitting on a stainless steel counter top.

This is the mini strainer we use for our milk. It comes with 300 disposable filters and it works great while also being easy to clean!

Women's hand holding up a pint mason jar with goat milk in it and a lid on top.

We love Ball Mason Jars! We using them for so many things, including as our drinking glasses.

I also love these leak proof lids for the mason jars!

Collage of goat pictures that says "Our Life With Dairy Goats" Our Life With Purpose

Thanks for stopping by! Check back in for updates, because I hope to add more content about our goats in the future!