Scratched udders

We had 2 litres of milk from Pinkie tonight. She was however not happy about having her udders touched. She kicked out a few times. I think the problem is that her udders have a number of scratched on them. My conclusion is that they were caused by the pile of hawthorn branches we fed to them. The goats love to browse the leaves and leave behind skeleton branches. Tonight, at 10pm after attending a meeting of our local history society, with torch in hand I removed the branches from the goat paddock. We have a good supply of hawthorn from the other allotment holders who are gradually trimming their hedges. From tomorrow, I will tie any hawthorn into bundles and hang them from the fence so the goats can browse on them without having them on the ground. Other branches, such as the ash in the photo above, can still go into the goat paddock. They don't have thorns capable of shredding udders. Meanwhile, the aforementioned ash branches were stripped bare. The goats are eating much more greenery, and much less of the bought food at the moment. That of course makes me very happy! And it cuts down on food miles and carbon footprints.