Hi Rebecca!
How far into their lactation are they? If they are nursing their young you'll have to share, obviously.
Generally, the more you milk them, the more milk they will produce. They will start out giving a smaller amount, then reach their peak in 3-5 months, then usually taper off until they are dry at 8-10 months.
A good quality hay, fresh clean water 24/7 and good feed will also help them to put out more milk.
If you want the milk to taste like milk, I would suggest keeping any bucks any might have away from your does, their scent can flavor the milk.
What we do, is after we're done milking into a stainless steal pail, we pour it into our stainless steal milk bin, (with lid) and take it inside, strain it with a filter into glass jars, and then store in the fridge right away. Then we drink and use it raw.
Some people will test their does for Johnes I know, and often Caseous Lymphadenitis, or CL, which causes abcesses. When the abcess pops, the contents of it can be contagious to other goats, and even people. It seems most abcesses are on the outside, but sometimes they can have them internally which can kill the goat. Unless an abcess is on or in the udder/mammary system it will not be in the milk. That said, none of our goats have been tested, although I'm going to have our herd tested for showing purposes.
Generally, if your animals are healthy, you use sanitized equipment, and chill the milk quick, raw milk is safe to drink. Pasteurization was created in the earlier 1900's I believe, because people were getting sick from raw milk, that was basically contaminated by uncleanly methods of that age. They didn't have the scientific knowledge that we do today, to use stainless steal, cooling the milk, sanitized equipment, etc.
Studies show that pasteurization kills most of the benefits of goat milk. It can diminish vitamin content, destorys vitamins C, B6, and B12, denatures protiens, destroys enzymes, and kills beneficial bacteria. Which in turn will help promote the nasty pathogens. Basically, raw milk will be helping you mentally and physically more than pasteurized.
There was a study done a couple years ago, they put Ecoli in both raw milk, and pasteurized milk. After ten days the Ecoli had taken over the pasteurized milk, but the benefits of the raw milk destroyed the Ecoli completely.
Anyway, I hope that helps and I didn't confuse you too horribly. This is just my opinion of raw goat milk. I drink it every day.
Hopefully some others can add some more.
