| Date/Time | Location | Course facilitator |
| 30 Jun 2022 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM | 1RedHouse Cottages, Harebeating Lane, Hailsham | The Topping Family |
Join Rowena & Amos Topping as they teach their goat milking skills, the 9 strong Topping family have been enjoying keeping dairy goats for over a year on their one acre smallholding in Hailsham. They have two adult dairy goats of different breeds – one is a British Saanen (Willow), and the other is a British Toggenburg (Chestnut). Chestnut had two kids back in March – one male and one female.
They milk twice daily, Dan and the oldest 4 children taking turns on milking duty. The milk is a popular family choice! 
Once the kids are weaned the family hope to soon develop a cheese recipe and also become self sufficient in yoghurt.
On this beginners milking goat workshop, you will start with a tour of the goat barn and pasture, followed by a talk on the basics of keeping dairy goats. This includes information about housing, nutrition, health and the actual milking. There will be a demonstration of hand-milking with top tips on the correct set up to ensure calm goat on the milking stand, and ingenious DIY design of a milking stand. You will then have the chance to try milking one of the goats yourself, it’s harder than it looks to get it right! The workshop also covers how to correctly sterilise dairy equipment, filter the milk to ensure optimum taste and cool the milk efficiently.
The session will start at 6:00pm and finish around 8:00pm – this is to tie in with the evening milking time of the goats.
Tea, coffee and cake are included.
This workshop is running on two dates, Thursday 30th June and Saturday 6th August, if when you try to book both dates are full, please “buy” an interest ticket (FREE) and we will try and put this course on again in July or August.