Hazel has always had one utter that was harder to milk out than the other. I figured someone had used a needle to milk her before and messed up. We don't use needles, just the old fashioned hand milking. One utter was slower, but it was no big deal for us. The good side taking about 1/3 the strokes of the slow one.

One day we thought she was drying up, she's kind of new to us and may be pregnant. Again no biggy.

Then her milk came back. We were milking her, to keep from dealing with mastitis, just to ease her off. Then she came back to a regular level of milk.

But now that slow utter has gotten to be a real problem. It takes a good 30 minutes to milk her out, about twice of what it use to. And that's with a tad less milk than we use to get.

I'm not sure what to do. If anything. I don't know what to call this so I can't look up helpful answers. Should we dry her out? Is this called something? The milk is fine, she seems fine in all other aspects. She's eating, her movements are fine, she's not acting odd, seems well. That utter is maybe tender, she fusses some if we try to aply more pressure, so we just milk it slow and steady.

Thanks for any info and/or experiences! Robin bacawind@yahoo.com

-- Robin (bacawind@yahoo.com), July 12, 2004