I have two 4 yr old holstein twins that I raised on bottles. When the first one calved I tried hand milking for a couple of days. I learned that I was not cut out for that job lol. Dun is right. You'll need the bengay!
I bought an old universal milking bucket on Ebay for less than $100. Someone gave me a vacuum pump. The first couple of times I used the milker on the cow was, to say the least, an adventure. I had to restrain her back legs and avoid flying poop. After the first few milkings, she decided fighting it wasn't worth the effort.
You'll need a stall or something similar for your cow to stand in while you milk her. She'll do much better if you feed her some grain while milking.
If you are better at hand milking than I was (and you wouldn't have to be very good to be better than me), you will need some way to keep her from kicking over your milking pail. A stainless steel milking bucket with a wide mouth is best. I used a cheap plastic bucket, but cleaning it was a chore as it tended to be hard to rinse after washing. You might think about restraining her tail so that you don't get swatted by it.
After milking, you'll need something to use as a strainer. I went the cheap route and used a clean white hankercheif. I poured the milk from the pail into some 1 gallon pickle jars. I've read on some dairy boards that paper towels work well too. For just the one cow, you probably won't want to go the expense of buying a cream seperator. You can put the milk in the fridge in a covered container overnight. The cream will rise to the top, be thick and easy to ladle off. I used a soup ladle to dip the cream off of the milk I had. If you plan to make homemade butter and don't have a churn, a blender can be used. I prefer an old mayonaisse jar or something similar to that. Fill the jar with the cream, leaving about 2 inches of open space between the cream and the lid. Let the cream sour if you'd like, or let it get to room temp. Then "churn" it by slowly shaking the jar up and down. It usually takes about 20 mins for the churning to be done. I haven't tried making cheese, but hear that it is very tasty.
If you are planning to use the milk for your family, there is a way to pasturize the milk using a double boiler, but I'm not sure how that works. I'd suggest buying the pasturizer if it isn't too expensive. If your cow is like my two, you'll have PLENTY of milk. I just dried one of my girls off about 2 wks ago. I sold her calf in Nov (he was a year old) and she was still giving around 4 gallons of milk a day with only one milking. If I'd milked twice a day (as should be done) she'd probably have doubled that amount.
We personally don't use the milk for ourselves. I make butter once in a while, but am the only one that will eat it. I bought a couple of calves to bottle feed the milk to. They did fine on her milk and are doing well now that they've been weaned.
If you think of any other questions and think I can help, send me an email at
[email protected] I'll be glad to answer.