Hello. I’m trying to encourage some of our Nigerian Christian friends to learn how to milk their African or Nigerian Dwarf (Pygmy) goats. I’ve been in a Seminary context for many years at the ECW A Theological Seminary, Kagoro, in Kaduna State, being the country’s middle belt, which has a more savannah-type climate. I’m returning for a short visit on November 24 with my wife and two friends who’ve been dairy farmers with cows.
The local Nigerians raise their goats for meat, but most have shied away from trying to milk them. I’ve seen a few YouTube videos showing that this variety is a very good milker, with the milk being high in butterfat. They could give up to a liter or quart a day and could be milked twice daily a good part of the year.
Hi Dennis,
I have some experience milking Nigerian Dwarf and other mixed breed goats. The milk is good but harder to get than milk from goats bred for milk. The teats tend to be small, so you’ll need strong fingers. I find milking with a thumb and two fingers works fairly well on goats with small teats. The goats are also short, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for a milking bucket. I used a small cup or jar held in the hand and emptied it into a larger container, which also reduces loss when they kick. In my experience African type goats don’t appreciate being milked, but if you can put them against a wall or lock them in a good stanchion it helps. Some will just lie down on the job, which can be prevented with a sling. Eventually they will get used to being milked but some are just ornery!
The bigger problem with miking goats in your context will probably be making sure that they are in good condition. If they’re not healthy enough, they won’t be able to produce enough for you and their kids until the kids are weaned. Either way, you will need to have a way to separate them from their kids, usually overnight is the easiest as they can be put in separate buildings.
Hopefully that gives you a few ideas, let us know if you have any specific questions.
I will not exaggerate my experience as extensive concerning locally adapted meat goats kept over much of Africa. (It is incorrect to speak of ‘native or indigenous goats’ which are not native to Africa but introduced thousands of years ago. I prefer the term “local”.) I will simply speak with broad strokes and generalizations which can always be proven wrong.
Most pastoralists milk some of their goats although scientists generally classify their stock as meat goats. Large herds enable selection of a few individuals with milk producing traits to be separated out for milking, often in the early morning after having been separated from their young overnight and prior to being rejoined for part of the day. Anyone used to seeing goats tied or confined for milking will be amused at a common scene of women or youth holding a goat by a rear leg held between the milker’s crossed legs, milking backwards into a cup or gourd, or another classic scene of a goatherder child milking the goat teat directly into his/her mouth to satisfy hunger or thirst. Rare individual local goats can produce up to a liter of milk per day but less than a quarter of a liter is more common even post-parturition, thus, the need to milk several to obtain larger sums of milk. Local goats also seem to be less persistent in producing much milk than the breeds selected for dairy in the West which sometimes are milked for two years between giving birth. Where they excel is resistance to some diseases and worm loads.
The breeds selected for milk in the West are mostly European (Saanen, Alpine, Toggrnberg, Oberhasli) or European composite breeds with Sudanese or Indian genetics (Anglonubian). The late Program Director of Heifer International, Gordon Harcher, urged programs to consider selecting outstanding individuals from among local goat breeds to create a local dairy goat breed rather than taking the risk of introducing exotic ‘high-bred dairy goat’ breeds. However, I never encountered any project doing this in Africa, but most projects were keen to accept purebred European dairy stock and quite successfully through simple training on zero-grazing conditions with fodder trees and grasses interplanted on contours within their fields. On the contrary, when the same goats were grazed in an extensive system, they frequently succumbed to diseases they encountered in other local stock, heavy worm loads, ticks, and if they survived, gave minimal production by comparison.
I grant my exposure to keeping goats by pastoralists in the Sahelian countries was minimal.