I grew up with goats. or to be slightly more accurate - our family kept about three to four goats, mainly for milk. I was the reason - cows milk allergy plus failure to thrive. So I never really knew what cows milk tasted like except when I visited friends. I tended to avoid drinking cows milk because to me, it tasted too watered-down. Occasionally I'd find a cows milk I liked, but it wasn't often. I woulddrink cows milk in a milkshake though.
My mother used to make ice cream from goats milk, although it was without an ice cream maker or anything, she never churned it and it would have icy lumps all through it. But that was probably because my mother was not the greatest of cooks back then, being too busy with too few kitchen aids.
When we travelled to Greece (especially Crete) about 20 years ago, we stayed with friends in an isolated village and there we had fresh goats milk (my parents would make we wait a day before having bread or milk) as well as home-made goats cheese and goat meat. I liked it all, although warm goats milk was a bit off-putting for me, especially as it had been 25 years since I'd drink goats milk and I'd NEVER had it still warm from the goat!
And I was able to tell my father on our return that I'd eaten goat and liked it - he used to slaughter our extra baby goats and I would get angry with him and told him that I would never willingly eat goat again. My father was amused when I told him; it was only a week before he died, I was glad I'd had the chance to at least talk to him.
We regularly eat fetta cheese made from either goats milk or sheep milk. It is a bit of an acquired taste, but a good Greek salad just doesn't taste right when made with creamy (not crumbly) cows milk fetta. A good authentic fetta should crumble, and not slice into waxy little cubes!
Back on Crete, I (sort-of) helped with the milking - all the milk from the two Swiss Alpine goats and five feral-looking sheep went into the one bucket, which nearly got upturned by one cranky-looking ewe sho stamped her foot and me and would have charged and had her rop knock over the bucket. The shepherdess, a young lass in her early 20s, would wrangle each animal on its rope, tether the rope by tying it to a long tuft of grass and she moved each animal to a fresh area before milking each one in turn by tucking the animal's head under her arm and leaning along the back of the animal, pulling the udders between the back legs with the bucket behind. I've only ever seen it done that way on Egyptian tomb murals...
When I was a child we had a milking stand built by my father. There was a feed trough at one end and the goats knew about it, they would rush for the stand (they each had their own stand they would go for, a sort of natural pecking order) and get up there, waiting. we'd drop the bar over their necks and pin it in place with a bent nail through ahole. You have to be really careful with goats, they're smart and will figure out how to get loose.
We'd then sit on a plank between the stands and milk the goats into a bucket. Our milking buchet had a wire strainer (fine mesh) to strain out hairs. We'd milk cow style, with the bucket under the animal. It meant not having to shift the bucket to avoid poop etc as they would have to in the Cretan way. I think my shepherdess frined must had pulled the udder slightly to one side and aimed sligtly sideways into the bucket, to avoid that problem. Certainly it wasn't a problem for her.
Back to our milking - we had three corgis. They LOVED it when my sister did the milking - they would sit and beg, three dogs in a row, and she would squirt at each dog in turn. I wish we'd had video back then!
Once milking was finished the goats would be released, they'd get down and head back into the pen. Occasionally one would try to turn left instead of right, to head into the garden. We had to stand in the passageway to prevent this.
Goats tend to be fussy and don't like eating off the ground. We had a large feed trough (circular) that was like an old European fountain, raised and circular, metal on a stone base. Occasionally kids (as in baby goats) would climb inside and we'd have to go in and drag them out.
Dad built the goar yard from plumping pipes held together with plumbing fittings, threaded pipes and fittings. The gates were held shut with a bent rod (into a U-shape) which was dropped into the hollow pipes that formed the gate and the gste post. A clever goat was able to lift out the U-piece so Dad made another one, longer this time, so the goat was never quite able to pull it out all the way even at full stretch of her neck.
We had a water trough in the goat yard, Dad kept the mosquito wrigglers down by keeping a goldfish or two in the trough. He had a ball valve in ther trough to keep it constantly filled as it emptied. The trough ran between two different pens, we had sheep in the other pen.
The contents of the pens would be barrowed out and put on the vegetable garden. We lived off what we produced (10 of us), even though it was only about twice the size of a normal Sydney suburban block today. To me, so very young, the place seemed huge. I've since driven around the old property (I mean driving around the roads looking from the outside - the place isn't THAT big!) and I can see how small it really is, now it's been subdivided into two homes with minimal yard space. And we had a farm there!
When you keep milkers, you need to be there always, every day, milking day and night. You're a slave to them. Also, goats get lonely and will call you and drive you and the neighbours nuts. So don't make pets of them, too much, or you won't have farm animals, you'll have a problem. Mind you, I think they were Dad's pets. And I used to climb into the pen and play with the kids. I'd be there when they were born. One doe used to drop triplets regularly, and Dad would quickly despatch one of the three because he said the doe only had two teats, she couldn't feed three kids. I argued that she could but she never got the chance. I know now that I was right.
Choose your goats carefully. Think about what you want, plan their housing. If you have the area covered over, the manure won't stink. But if it gets wet and soggy, it's nasty. And goats are fussy. They love to be clean. Their feet need to be clean and dry.
We had a doe with mastitis - we bought her cheap, she was sick. dad kept working those teats, stripping her out, he spent all the time on her, it seemed. But I remember it was only intensely so, for about a week and then she was fine after that, turned out Occupational Therapist (OT) be a great milker.
We have a lot of great info on goat-keeping in Australia. Look for a magazine called "Grass Roots" for some alternative ideas, including some lateral thinking stuff. There should be a website. Be wary of anything coming out of Nimbiin or Lismore, though - it could be brilliant or the info could be feral. Double-check it.
I hope this helps.
PS - in my mid-teens we sold the goats and moved. We had a lovely Jersey house-cow and her milk was wonderful, even after being used to goats milk. So from this I surmise - goats milk tastes stronger and richer than cows milk. But I never tasted it side by side, after I stopped drinking goats milk regularly. But one ting - cows milk has lots of cream that rises to the top. Goats milk doesn't do this much. I remember small amounts of cream being skimmed off the goats milk, but not as a rule.
Marg