Vacuum Pump

When we first got our cow we tried milking by hand. Milking by hand was a good experience. Now we know how to milk if there is no power, it is also very easy to clean up since you only have the bucket and the filter to clean. Unfortunately it takes a lot of work to do the milking, and while you are milking there is a lot of ways to get stuff falling into the bucket, like cow hairs, mosquitoes, and cow pie bits. If certain things fall in, it does not matter how many time you filter it you just won’t want to use it, making the whole milking a waste.

We decided this time when the cow freshened that we would get a milker. When the cow did freshen we were not ready to buy the milker, but a neighbor was kind enough to loan us their milker for a while. Having the milker through the winter was great. It did a great job keeping the milk clean, but the milker was difficult for us to clean. Our neighbor has a sink in his barn where they milk and they are able to clean it right out in the barn. We needed to haul water out to the barn to clean it which was a pain. Our neighbor has a wood stove burning in the tack room of the barn where they keep the milker, we had frozen hoses several times which made us start taking all the hoses, bucket, and claw into the house after each milking.

The milking was a fairly long process. A couple buckets would be filled with hot soapy water. The milker bucket, hoses, and claw would be hauled out to the barn. The cow would be hooked up and milked. After milking, the milking bucket would be taken in the house and the milk would be filtered and put in containers. Then the milk bucket and bucket of soapy water would be taken back to the barn. The milker would be washed and the dirty water emptied. The bucket would be rinsed and filled with water again, hauled out to the barn. The milker then would be rinsed and rinse water would be emptied. The wash bucket, milk bucket, hoses and claw would then be hauled back into the house and the filter would be cleaned. The reason everything had to be taken out to the barn is that the vacuum pump is very heavy and would be impossible for one person to get in and out of the house.

Surge Bucket Milker

We are very grateful to our neighbor for loaning us the milker. It let us have good clean milk. It also helped us make decisions as to what we wanted in a milker. We wanted a milker with no long hoses. We wanted a milker that could be cleaned in the house without the use of the vacuum pump. We wanted a milker that was easy to use and easy to carry in and out.

We decided to buy a surge bucket milker. There was a small problem though, production of surge bucket milkers ended in 1999. I started bidding on old, used surge milkers on ebay. By the time I was done bidding I had one mostly working milker (all that was needed was to replace the inflations) and another that needs a few parts worked on. I also bought a small, very portable vacuum pump which will stay in the barn on a shelf Sean and I built for it.

The new milker really sucks! It works really well and milks very quickly. It is easy to get back and forth from the barn. It is easy to clean. It has no long hoses. It keeps the milk clean. We are very pleased with the purchase and would recommend the setup for anyone that has only one or two cows to milk. The surge bucket milker is great.