She Loves Her Hand-Pumped Milker

She Loves Her Hand-Pumped Milker DAIRY EQUIPMENT & IDEAS Dairy Equipment & Ideas 30-4-14 A new hand-pumped milker is making life easier for people who milk goats and sheep. The hand-held, trigger operated pump has a flange that fits snugly over the teat. A few pulls of the trigger creates a vacuum in the attached bottle. When an 87-year-old goat breeder near West Valley, New York saw a photo of the milker in FARM SHOW last year, she wanted to try it. "My hands are getting weaker and weaker," says Dorothy Shaw. She was worried that she'd have to give up her goats, afraid she could no longer milk them - until she discovered the Udderly EZ milker. "I was a physical therapist for many years, specializing in polio patients, and I picked up the virus somewhere along the way. It's something called polio rebound," she says. She lost part of the use of her thumbs, and has a lot of disability in both hands. "The milker revolutionized my life. I use it every day, twice a day, on two goats. I get a half gallon per milking, twice a day, from each goat," she says. "With this pump it doesn't take much squeezing; I squeeze the trigger maybe 5 times to create the necessary vacuum and then sit there and watch the milk flow. When the flow slows down to almost nothing, I squeeze it again," she says. With this device she hopes to be able to continue milking her goats for a long time. "If my hands get real weak, I can use two hands." The milker is easy on the udder, and the goats like it because milking is so comfortable and quick. "I have a mischeivous, cantankerous goat that doesn't like being milked and doesn't like to be up on the milking stand even though she's fed up there. With this device, she doesn't even know she's being milked!" Dorothy Shaw thinks a lot of goat breeders will want to have one of these milkers once they find out about it. "And the people who milk sheep will also want it, because sheep are much harder to milk than goats. "Other types of milkers for a sheep or goat dairy cost about $4,000. I paid less than $200 for this Udderly EZ milker," she says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Buck Wheeler, EZ Animal Products, LLC, 33032 795th Ave., Ellendale, Minn. 56026 (ph 866 507-7773 or 800 287-4791 or 507 256-7738; buck@thestabelizer.com; www.UdderlyEZ.com).

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