East Friesian dairy sheep providing fresh raw milk for the homestead daily

This is the second season milking our East Friesian dairy sheep. We are getting a little more than 1/2 gallon of milk a day from two ewes. Whatever we don't immediately use, we freeze, or make yogurt, ice cream or "farm cheese" (basically curding milk with vinegar). Still haven't tried to make proper cheese with the milk yet but looking forward to it. We also use some of the milk to make soap.

Last season, we kept the dairy sheep in with the main flock we raise for lamb meat. I would move the milking stanchion and equipment along as we rotated the sheep through the pastures. It turned out to be more work than it was worth keeping all the sheep together. This season we created a static 5 paddock system just for the dairy sheep close to the house. Now it's a short walk to milk in the morning and to separate the lambs at night.

Here is a note from last year showing how we moved the milking operation with the main flock.