Simple Homemade Hand-Powered Milker

Simple Homemade Hand-Powered Milker LIVESTOCK Sheep/Goats 31-5-17 When Hughlene Dunn needed hand surgery and couldn't milk her two goats, she went looking for a milk pump to help her out. But she couldn't justify the cost of the units on the market. After all, she was only going to need a milker for a couple of months until she recovered from her surgery. "Instead I bought a spray bottle with a padded handle," she recalls. "I also picked up some 1/4-in. clear plastic tubing and a 35 cc syringe and connected the tube on the spray pump to the syringe." Once the goat udder had been washed and the syringe was wetted with a squirt of milk, Dunn slipped it over the goat's teat. She then began pumping the spray handle, which quickly created a vacuum seal. Milk began to flow with each compression, and Dunn massaged the udder while squeezing the handle until the udder felt empty. Not only did she not have to hold the syringe in place, but when she finished, she had to break the vacuum seal to remove it. "It worked great, and I used it for a month before I had surgery, and my neighbor used it for a month and a half while I recovered. It emptied the udder out real well without a lot of stripping," says Dunn. "One of my does has one teat that's smaller and I thought I would need a smaller syringe, but I didn't." She cleaned the pump nightly with cold and then hot water pumped through it. Once a week, she soaked it in hot water with dish detergent and pumped that through it. She also pumped white vinegar through it. She doesn't use the milker anymore since her doctors feel the milking by hand is good therapy. However, she has held on to it and recently used it to collect colostrum." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Hughlene Dunn, 21205 S. 4190 Rd, Claremore, Okla. 74019 (ph 918 343-3025; fax 918 283-1053; hughlene. dunn@ sbcglobal.net; www.dunnmilkingfarm.com).

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