# Pink in milk?



## Island Creek Farm (Jun 16, 2010)

LONG...sorry! 

Ok, this in an add question, but maybe someone else has run into it...

I had a gallon stored in a stainless milk tote in the fridge. My son made soup and put the milk back in the fridge...I went in to transfer it to the more pourable glass container and when the milk welled back up there was a pink swirl (tinge) in the middle. I thought my son had made tomato soup and hit the edge of the milk container with the can and got some in there, so I dumped the milk. The milk was maybe 48 hours old. Since then, nothing. 

Today I was dumping my quarts into the pan to make more mozzerella, and when I set them upside down in the dishwasher the drip in the bottom of one had a tinge of pink...is it blood?

CMT's clean, cultures (done at AU) clean too. Goats fat and healthy. I strain into quart jars and ice cool immediately. No blood in filters. Milk smells/tastes fine (I'm the guinea pig). It seems to appear at the bottom of the jars, not the tops--and not in all containers. Jars/equipment boiled to sterilize, sprayed w/Hoeggers sanitizer. Use Fight Bac after milking and a light bleach solution before.

help!


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## buckrun (Mar 7, 2008)

Yes it is blood
Get your does some vitamin C. Get chewable cheap stuff. 
They can use as much as 1000mg a day when they are doing that.
It will strengthen their capillaries.
You can feed them citrus peels chopped bite sized too.


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## Island Creek Farm (Jun 16, 2010)

Phew! Thanks!

I had seen the vitamin C thread, just wanted to check..I rather expected it to be clotted, not just wafting through the milk! I'll get some tomorrow!


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## Laverne (Apr 4, 2010)

Possibly a little too rough with milking and massaging for milk let down. Are human kids taking turns milking?


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## carlidoe (Jul 30, 2010)

My milker did this. Her udder was so tight with 12 hrs of milk in it, I figured it was leaking capillaries. I always just let the blood settle to the bottom and poured off the good milk into a different container. This was just normal for her for a while. 
Once I stopped giving her as much grain as the previous owner did, she started producing just a tad less milk, but no blood!

My vet said that heat stress can also do this. 
One thing I tried just in case I was milking her too rough, was milking the last 10-12 squirts into a different container, not my main milk pail. Thinking that the injury was occurring at the last of the milking....it didn't work, still had blood


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## Squires (Jul 23, 2010)

carlidoe said:


> My milker did this. Her udder was so tight with 12 hrs of milk in it, I figured it was leaking capillaries. I always just let the blood settle to the bottom and poured off the good milk into a different container. This was just normal for her for a while.
> Once I stopped giving her as much grain as the previous owner did, she started producing just a tad less milk, but no blood!


Yep. :yes Your goat is just over-producing to the point where the udder is stressing and yes, capillaries are breaking before you get the milk out. I suspect you could milk three times a day and relieve the pressure. Nothing wrong with the milk unless you are selling to a customer who would freak out at the blood in the milk. There are whole civilizations that have lived for thousands of years on blood and on milk in rough times. It's all good. :

This is why we do NOT feed grain to dairy sheep until some time after they have lambed :naughty- - their udders explode from zero to one-gallon size in less than 24 hours and capillaries will burst. I never thought of the vitamin C -- I guess because my sheep lamb on pasture usually, and have so much green fodder. Coincidentally, the worst case of "pink-milk" I ever saw was in a ewe who lambed a huge single during the winter when we had no green fodder. After a difficult birth, she produced an amazing amount of milk from the start. Hmm. Vitamin C sounds like a plan. :

Reduce her grain or increase frequency of milking, or just wait it out -- will be OK.


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## Jo~* (Oct 26, 2007)

I had the same thing happen but it cleared up after a week or 10 days. Just right on the bottom of the jar just as you said.


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## Island Creek Farm (Jun 16, 2010)

Her production has increased, and yes, she gets very tight, plus she's put on a bit more weight (good).

This is the doe from a previous post who was uneven after Pirsue treatment for sub-clinical mastitis. We did get a sudden "evening" of the udder...maybe that could have caused the capillary breakage as well?

Yup, she's got a BUNCH of potential causes!


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