A goat milking stand is kind of a necessity when you have dairy goats. I mean, you could milk them on the ground but it would be hard on your back and probably a bit less sanitary than on an elevated stand.
We’ve definitely found having a milk stand to be a very good thing.
Back when we got Gertie, our old family milk cow, Derek built us an elevated milk stanchion and it was great! Building a goat milking stand is similar but on a much smaller scale.
Obviously, goats are a wee bit smaller than cows. I’m happy to say that we were able to use scrap materials so our goat milking stand was completely free.
Once we knew that our goats would be coming home, we got right to work on getting the stand built. Little did we know that we would go from just having our 2 does to milk to having 6 does for several months.
Our milk stand was broken in fast! We goat sat/borrowed some of our breeder’s does in milk for a while along with a buck for breeding our girls.
Having a buck on hand for breeding was nice but I don’t think that I’d like to own one. Boy goats do some strange things….. but I digress, this is not about boy goats and their gross antics. On to the building of the milk stand!
Building a Goat Milking Stand
We started out by deciding what size we wanted to make our stand by looking up some other goat milking stand plans online (I’ll link them at the end of the post) and settled on the size and style we thought would work best for our situation.
When choosing the size of your stand, you will want to take into consideration the size of your goat breed. If you have a full size breed like us, we have Nubians, you’ll need to build the stand larger than if you have a miniature breed like Nigerian Dwarfs.
Derek is good at hoarding ridiculous amounts of collecting scrap wood and things so we had just what we needed to get the milk stand built.
He used his circular saw to make all of the necessary cuts for each component of the stand. Remember, measure twice and cut once (hopefully).
Once Derek cut all of the required pieces, he began to assemble the goat milking stand.
The material list for the goat milking stand:
Frame and floor/deck:
4- 22″ tall 2×4’s for the legs
8- 10″ (long point to long point) 2×4’s cut on 45° angles for the braces
2- 48″ 2×4’s for the long sides and 2- 24″ 2×4’s for the short sides
For the floor/deck of the stand, we used random width 2 by boards cut to 27″.
Head gate/chute:
2- 36″ 2×4’s for the stationary upright side boards
2- 24″ 2×4’s to frame the top of the head gate/chute
For the head lock, we used 2- 40″ 2×2’s slid between the top boards of the head gate frame. One was made stationary by fastening it at the top and the bottom.
The other is only fastened at the bottom so that it can be slid over to hold the head in. They are spaced 5″ apart at the bottom.
He started with framing up the legs and frame sides. After that, he braced them.
He then placed and secured the floor/deck boards for the platform of the stand.
The last thing he built was the head lock and feed trough. He made one of the head lock boards moveable and we use a bolt inserted in a hole we drilled to secure it in place while milking.
The feed trough was just built to fit the goat milking stand. We used scrap 1×6 boards to do so.
The finished dimensions of the stand are:
Floor height- 23 1/2″
Length- 48″
Width- 24″
Our 2 does were dried off for several months before they were due to kid so that their bodies could focus on growing babies instead of producing milk. They have both kidded this spring (3 bucklings and 2 doelings, YAY for baby goats!) and we are back to milking.
We are more than excited about having our milk again. I enjoy the time spent with my goats as well as all of the fresh, yummy milk they provide for our family.
More goat milking stand plans from other bloggers:
The Homesteading Hippy’s Plans
More Great Similar Posts:
Hi Derek and Jenna
just like to say a big thank you for the goat milking stand plans, I’ve just finished ours, and it works a treat, the new goat is very happy on it.
kind regards
Mark from the UK
How much grain do you use during the milking process?
Well, I was searching for info on goats because we will get our first doe and a billy around February 3rd! I don’t want to make costly mistakes.
Your site has provided a good start in my goat instructions!
Thanks!
This is great! Do you have any images of the headpiece/closure part of the building process?
Just a note that there is a slight error in the measurements. Either the sides should be around 20″, or the floor board should be around 28″ so they fit together properly as in the photo. Otherwise as I discovered this afternoon when trying to follow the pictures and measurements as given your floor boards will fall through your floor as they are exactly the same size as the side boards so there is no base on which to screw them.