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Friday, May 25, 2012

You Never Stop Learning

I went to make another batch of cheese this afternoon and found this sitting on the bottom, inside two jars:

IMG_6950

Ummm, is it just me, or is that clearly NOT milk!? I totally panicked when I saw it. Why on earth was there blood in the bottom of two jars??? One jar was from the 17th, and the other from the 23rd. When I milked on those days, the milk had been perfectly normal. No pink color, no clumps, stringiness, or heat in Sombrita's udder, which would have told me that this was a case of mastitis. No, the milk tasted perfectly sweet, it was clean and clear. But what was with this blood that had mysteriously appeared!?!?!

Thank heavens for The Goat Spot. I was able to put write out an emergency post and got answers within the hour. It was agreed by many that this wasn't mastitis, but most likely was a broken capillary in the udder.

Insert huge sigh of relief. 

Truth be told, I didn't even know a goat could bust a capillary and this could result. I suppose my pride probably needed a good debunking. My head was probably swelling a bit too much these days anyway...

Sombrita has very poor udder attachments so her udder hangs like a heavy bag of groceries and it swings and bangs around as she walks. My guess is that in all her rough housing that she's been doing lately, she must have either been rear ended by another goat, or she just did too much running and gave that udder a sound trouncing. 

There goes my batch of cheese... Now I'm going to have to wait two more days. Phooey. 

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