hollowdweller said:
How did you like the Togg milk? Here in the US Toggenburgs are the most likely to have "goaty" strong flavored milk. I always heard the speculation that some strains of Toggs were bred for making stronger cheese and were selectively bred for strong milk. I had some friends in Pennsylvania who ran a raw milk goat dairy. Once a month they would take a sample from each goat and the husband, who was the most discriminating would sample the milk. He claimed to be able to tell most of about 30 does from the taste of their milk, and said that 90% of the off flavor they had was from Toggs, especially the descendants of one famous buck Stoneybrook Cavalier.
Another thing my friend who had all the breeds said was the Toggs were the smartest and big escape artists.
I'm not a large scale cheese maker. The pic of the cheese is from 2 gallons of milk.
One of my early saanens had off flavor milk and over the years of breeding I have taken special care to select only lines with good tasing and keeping milk.
Hi Hollowdweller, thanks for the reply.
The story of our goat keeping is kind of protracted. I became allergic to cows milk a few years ago, shortly before moving to a rural area of the UK, so goats milk was the next best option. Just before we moved, a friend gave us a togg nanny, which stayed on another friends farm till we had sold up. Some months later, we had her serviced by yet another friends billy. This enabled us to milk after the kid was born and was an enjoyable start on the road to milking, cheese-making and all the stuff that goes with it. About 2 years after moving, the original nanny died in late pregnancy after recieving a side impact from a jealous sheep. We kept the nanny kid and had her serviced as well as bartering for another nanny as companion. The one that we'd bartered for was an expert escapologist, even climbing trees to escape the boundaries. In doing so, she "taught" our first nanny how to climb - which led to them both getting into the chicken pen and the ultimate depature as noted in my first post.
As to the taste of the milk, when the only other option is soya milk, I don't care what breed of goat my milk comes from, it's always better than the alternative
Being from one of the wetter parts of the UK, we had to keep the goats feet trimmed and were constantly on the look-out for straw for dry bedding.
I played a pretty cruel joke on a mate at work who was always pestering for me to make him some goats cheese. I made the cheese and let it mature for a few months, then took it into work one friday night - he had already left for the weekend, so I left it in his office. When he got back on monday morning the smell nearly knocked him over
But it stopped him asking endless dumb questions.
I suppose I miss their antics and enquisative looks whenever I'm out in the garden, but its still unfair to expect my wife to look after them when I'n not here.
All the best to you and yours,
Ogri the trog
