I don’t know why you’d have to freeze goat milk before making soap. I never saw a recipe that required it, and I’ve made a LOT of goat milk soap without freezing the milk first. In fact, I’d milk the goats, strain it through the milk filter into my big kettle, and immediately start the soap-making process. The only real requirement, as I recall now, 12 years later, was that the milk be COLD because you’d be combining it with lye, which causes a chemical reaction that creates great heat. I’d set the kettle in a sink of ice-water, not freeze it.
LuAnn, goats are indeed a lot easier and less expensive than cows, especially to feed, house, pasture, medicate, breed (you can keep a buck for a LOT less than a bull, and with a lot less danger!), and the effort required to remove one from your FOOT is a WHOLE lot less!
I helped birth probably 95% of my baby goats (saving lives when they’d come in wrong positions), left them with mother 2-3 days, long enough to get the colostrum, then removed mother back out to pasture and the kids to a warm pen under heat-lamps in the barn, and bottle-fed them until they were switched to hay and grain. That imprinted them on ME as “Mama,” and whenever they saw me afterward, they would run TO me, not away, as many a mother-raised kid would do. It requires more effort to feed them that way, but the pay-off in gentle, friendly, approachable, easily-handled goats is worth a fortune.
I also made sure NOBODY messed with my Alpine and Boer bucks, and they were just as gentle as the does. I could go out when two of them were butting heads for dominance during the rut (breeding season), get hold of their collars (all the goats wore collars for easy handling), and walk one on either side of me, with no problem. The only buck I ever had ANY trouble with was a Nubian I’d borrowed from a man who (unknown to me) had abused him, which tried to kill me and my husband on separate occasions. Thankfully, that buck was dehorned, or he could have done some real harm. I was never so glad to see an animal go down the road in my life!
Dehorning goats takes away their only means of defense, but it also prevents them from getting their heads stuck in fences, and perhaps poking out someone’s eye, or causing injuries when they fight one another. Most fights aren’t that serious, but accidents can happen. Horns can get ripped off or broken, too, which causes lots of bleeding and looks terribly scary. Keep a container of blood-stop or powdered alum on hand for stopping bleeding (for man AND beast!)
Most people think goats eat garbage and weeds, but they don’t; they are VERY picky eaters. They prefer grain (especially sweet-feed), dog/cat kibble, rose bushes and any other flowers you want to grow, your garden, your fruit trees, hedges, etc. AND choice alfalfa and grass hay, or clean grass in the pasture – they WILL NOT eat what’s been urinated or defecated on, or moldy hay or grain. Goats are browsers, standing up on their hind legs to reach low tree limbs and tender bark, and are used to clear brush from fields and forests.
Goats love to stand on wire fences, breaking the welds or getting tangled in them, or poking their heads through the holes. Barb-wire will snag and tear udders – don’t use it if at all possible. Use woven field-fence for strength, not the cheap ‘utility’ fencing – it’s useless for goats! They’ll have it torn apart in a very short time and you’ll be spending more to replace it.
I loved having goats. They can be frustrating, aggravating, irritating and totally obnoxious (they stand on your car, eat the wiper blades or break them off, eat everything you’re TRYING to grow, ignoring what you WANT them to eat, come when they want to, etc. – just like children and husbands), but they’re affectionate, cheap to maintain, the right breeds (and individual goats) give lots of milk (Alpine, Saanen, etc.) and/or provide lots of delicious meat (Boers), and they’re prolific, with up to 5 or even 6 kids, depending on the breed. They’re so nice, though, that you’ll find yourself wanting to keep them all!
