I spent some time and effort a number of weeks ago designing and building an elevated milking stanchion for my girl, Bumblebee. The thing looks cool, it gets the cow to a more comfortable working height than ground height, and the wife (who has milked our goats for years on various hacked together stanchions) said she wants the cow on a stanchion before she will lift a single, Epicurean finger to help with the cow milking. Getting her up onto the stanchion (back to Bumblebee, now, not the wife – stay with me!) was kind of exciting the first time (and yes, she anointed it immediately with poop – probably out of acrophobia) but there were LOTS of disappointments initially as we settled into a new routine. Here are the worst problems and what I’ve done to mitigate them.

1. My girl is so far away!

When I milked on the ground, I’d be sitting in the straw almost underneath Bumblebee with my cheek pressed up against her side. I could listen to the burbling of her many stomachs and hear the shuffling of any cud or the descending of any ammo into the drop bay. My singing could be sotto voce and she’d still enjoy the vibrations from my voice into her side. My stanchion is a beautiful fit and she isn’t standing farther away than she has to in it, but when she’s up there, at least a 2″x 6″ is between my head and the cow. I’m not sure there is a solution on this one that didn’t involve removing the guard rail, which I don’t feel is a safe option for the cow. I may have to just make this emotional transition to the new normal for milking.

2. My arms are at a new angle.

I know. Button it up, Buttercup, stop being such a whinger! I’m pretty proud of my hand milking technique and my ripped fingers and forearms. I didn’t realize how much of my comfort with hand milking had to do with the familiarity of the position, though! When the cow rises into the air and I’m shuffled off to the sidelines off the stanchion, the angle I’m holding my arms has changed and my relative position to the teats is different. It feels almost like I’m building up the milking muscles again from scratch. I have yet to experiment with different seating options and positions. Some of that may help but I’m confident some time will take care of this. The muscles will adjust to the new position just as they had to make the initial adjustment for all of us when we first began milking.

3. The bucket sits miles below the udder!

Milking on the ground, I kept things tidy and comfortable at the head gate by simply piling clean straw under the cow. This provided a pillow for me to sit on, a clean cover for the milk pail to sit on, and it raised the pail a few inches closer to the teats making it that much easier to direct the streams into the pail. When I switched to the stanchion and the pail was sitting on the wooden platform under her udder it seemed like it was a mile away and I had to squint and strain to direct the stream of milk into the bucket. I’m experimenting with supports of varying heights to keep under my pail on the stanchion. Four to five inches seems about right but blocks of wood are too difficult to clean quickly. I’ll find something yet that brings my bucket to a more familiar height and is still easy to clean. Maybe it will be good for my aim anyway to leave the bucket a little farther from the teats!

4. Lands Sake! The Poo!

Milking on the floor of the barn in my cushion of clean straw made the occasional poo Bumblebee would drop in the stanchion a minor issue. If they were really wet, they would splash a little as the patty on the ground got fresh additions from on high. I learned to pull the bucket when I first heard and felt the shifting of the cow as she prepared to unload and I would have a handful of straw in the other hand to deposit onto the newly forming patty to minimize the splatting. I seldom had to even re-clean the udder.

The first time she unloaded on the stanchion was another story! The smack of the patty on the clean, bare pine boards sent little poo-missiles to every corner of the barn, seemingly. The milk bucket up near the front of the cow got hit and I didn’t have straw on hand quickly enough to help dull the aftershocks as the rest of the poo joined the pile. It was a disaster and added 10 minutes to the milking process to re-sanitize the cow, the equipment and to bleach my eyes. That didn’t include the after-milking time to clean the stanchion.

I’m pretty pleased with my solutions to this problem, coming soon to another post, the Pooper Chuter. It involves a simple, no-cost device that anyone can assemble in minutes and eliminates almost entirely the issue of messes in the stanchion – those should be few and far between, though, if you practice proper pre-milking routine.

5. Save us! The Pee!

I seldom noticed and didn’t usually even pause my milking when Bumblebee peed on the floor during milking. The first time she peed on the stanchion, though, I nearly decided to burn it and the barn to the ground then and there. It splashed EVERYWHERE. On the milking bucket, into the milking bucket, into my mouth and eyes, into the chicken pen 30 feet away (possibly exaggerating that one. but not by much). It was horrific. Thankfully, the Pooper Chuter eliminates this issue entirely also. God bless the Pooper Chuter and its inventor!

Elevated Milking Stanchion Problems Conclusion

In conclusion, any change to a milking routine is going to have its positives and negatives and my transition to the elevated stanchion was no exception. It hasn’t all been roses, but there are a list of positives from the change as well that will be upcoming in a future post! I’m glad I took the time to build one (it wasn’t difficult or super expensive) and I’m already enjoying the best perk yet of the thing!