My daughter LOVES to help me take care of the goats. She’s been such a good helper with our bottle babies that my husband and I decided to give her one of the keeper bottle doelings for her very own! Not only would she get a baby goat for her birthday, we would build her a tiny milking stand for training her future milker!
To make this stand, I started with this bamboo shoe rack and bench from Amazon. It had everything I absolutely needed in the box, and I could have made the milking stand from only the supplies included with it, but I added in the feed bowl and pins to add realism to the play.
If you want to build one like mine, here’s what you’ll need:
- Bamboo shoe bench or similar one
- removable kennel bowl
- two eye bolts (optional)
- 2′ lightweight chain (optional)
- clear sealer (optional but recommended)
- scroll saw
- screwdriver
Here you can see the parts as they looked when I unpacked them from the shipping carton. I’m going to use nearly everything – but first I’ll need to make some adjustments.
The first thing I did was shorten the legs to just below where the middle shelf would have been on the shoe bench. The middle shelf will become the bottom shelf of my tiny milking stand. The (intended) bottom shelf of the shoe bench will become the head gate. I cut out the middle two slats of that shelf, discarded one entirely, and cut the second one so that the remaining length of wood was long enough to attach horizontally between the two outside slats that remain. This will be where I attach the kennel bowl. The two remaining slats are plenty far apart for my goat kid to get her head through easily.
I measured my daughter’s doeling and made sure that the bowl holder board would not be too low for her to eat comfortably from, and then I drilled holes to attach it in place. (Because my kennel bowl holder is much lower than the bowl itself, I had to measure 11″ from the bottom of the head gate to attach that board. You will need to adjust that for the bowl you choose. Yours might be higher than mine, or your goat might be smaller. Do your own measurements for this part.)
Now it’s time to assemble the bench mostly according to the instructions that came with it. Obviously now there is only one shelf, not two, but I attached the shelf and the legs to the bench top as instructed. Once I’d done that, I drilled and attached the head gate / food bowl holder to the front of the bench. I was able to use leftover screws and nuts from the bench’s hardware kit (due to not having that second shelf to bolt in place), and didn’t have to buy any extra pieces.
My daughter knows there are pins to lock the head gate in place when a goat is on the milk stand, so I drilled holes for some non-functioning head gate pins for her to use. I used eye bolts for this, and attached the eye bolts with some lightweight chain we had left from another project, so that they wouldn’t get lost. The chain is short enough that the goat kid won’t get caught in it but I think it still needs to be a bit shorter than what I have here, so I’ll be making that adjustment soon.
My little milking stand will be inside my milking parlor, out of the elements. If yours will be outdoors or where it will get wet, I highly recommend that you apply some weatherproofing sealant, especially on any cut ends of the wood. Bamboo is a flexible wood, too, so keep an eye on it for signs of warping or weakening. Remember, even though this is meant to be a realistic pretend milking stand, it’s still just pretend, and isn’t intended for a lot of rough play or wet conditions.
In case you’re wondering about our toy goat and cat… Our toy goat is discontinued but this is a similar one, and so is this one. The cat is by Aurora Miyoni and comes in different colors and poses.
I’m so happy with this miniature milking stand, and my daughter and her baby goat are happy with it, too! Did you build one? Be sure to show me how yours turned out!
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