Daily figures, weekly meaning
Milk recording works on two levels. The daily figure — what each doe gave at each milking — is the raw data, captured in seconds with a scale or a graduated bucket and written against the doe's name before you leave the parlour or pen. The weekly figure is where that data becomes information: total the week per doe, compare it with her previous weeks, and the shape of her lactation emerges. A doe holding steady, one climbing after a feed change, and one sliding for no obvious reason are three different management stories, and only the weekly view separates them.
What to record beyond the litres
Yield alone misleads without quality notes beside it. Record what the strip cup shows — flakes, clots, watery milk, a blood tinge — and anything your nose and palate catch at the household end: bitterness, feed taints, an unusual thinness. Note which milk was withheld from the household supply or the kids' bucket and why, and for how many milkings. Where you make cheese or sell milk, add the practical quality markers you actually use, such as how the milk set, separated, or kept, in plain terms you will understand in six months.
The columns that explain the numbers
A yield log earns its keep when it also carries the context columns: feed changes and quantities, turnout and forage shifts, breeding and kidding dates, health events and treatments, and notes on weather extremes or upheavals like a pen move. Most yield changes are not mysteries once the context is written down — the dip follows the hay batch change, the rise follows the new grazing. Without the context columns you are left guessing at patterns the log could have simply told you.
Reading the weekly sheet like a herd manager
Review the sheet at the same time each week and look for three things: does falling off their curve earlier than expected, which can point to feeding, parasites, or udder trouble worth a closer check; does whose quality notes repeat, because a doe with flakes in the strip cup three weeks running needs attention even if her yield holds; and your best performers across the whole lactation, whose daughters are your future herd. Persistent udder changes, a doe off her feed alongside a yield drop, or milk that stays abnormal after a few days are the points to involve a vet rather than keep watching.
Keeping the habit through the season
The system survives if it stays fast: scale and log kept where the milking happens, one line per doe per milking, weekly totalling done with the same routine each week — while the kettle boils counts. At drying off, close each doe's record with her season total and best week, and file it with her health history; next season's decisions about breeding, feeding, and culling read from exactly that page. A doe's numbers tell her story best alongside her health record, and KinsLe's Pet Passport keeps each doe's production log and health history together in her own packet from one lactation to the next.