PHOTO BY DAVID LOWE Lou Bradley milks Esther Nell, one of the Alpine goats at her dairy a few miles southwest of Lampasas. It all started as an attempt to lower their property taxes.

Now, 28 years after opening a goat dairy, Lou Bradley isn’t sure she and her husband, Dave Bradley, have saved any money. The Lampasas-area couple, however, have grown to love their animals -- and the dairy products they produce.

The Bradleys maintain a herd of about 20 Alpine and Nubian does on their land a few miles southwest of Lampasas. The Bradleys sell raw goat milk, goat cheese and other dairy products.

Mrs. Bradley, who remembers a neighbor dropping off quart-sized bottles of goat milk at her home when she was two, began her foray into dairy farming when the Lampasas Independent School District considered a tax increase. After attending what she called “a little bit rowdy” public meeting, Mrs. Bradley decided to seek an agricultural tax exemption by keeping livestock on her family’s property.

Mrs. Bradley’s friend Nancy Criss served as a mentor, teaching the new dairy owner how to worm her goats and trim their hooves, among other tasks.

Mrs. Bradley also sought classroom training to better equip her for raising milking goats. Beginning with courses in agronomy, horticulture and vegetable production, the Lampasas-area farmer progressed to an applied science degree in farm and ranch management from Central Texas College.

“I had the best time you ever saw,” Mrs. Bradley said.

Now, some of her greatest joys come from sitting behind her does -- whom she knows by name -- for their twice-daily milkings.

Mrs. Bradley herds her “girls” into an enclosed room and secures them three at a time onto a milking stand, where they can nibble at a sweet feed that contains 16 percent protein. After washing a goat’s teats, Mrs. Bradley uses a “strip cup” to remove bacteria and somatic cells.

Goats with a narrow stance -- which makes their udders difficult to reach -- are milked with a machine, although Mrs. Bradley prefers working by hand and savoring the calm of her milking room.

“You can tell your girls anything, and they won’t repeat it,” she said with a laugh. “They don’t give advice, and they don’t criticize.”

Talking to the does while milking keeps the animals calm, Mrs. Bradley said. “They know my voice.”

Once she has filled her milk bucket, Mrs. Bradley uses a cold spray to shrink the orifice on each teat and prevent dirt or other potential contaminants from encountering milk.

She then strains the milk and leaves it in a freezer for four or five hours. This allows the milk to chill to 45 degrees within 45 minutes, she said.

Her husband then bottles the milk and refrigerates it. The Bradleys reserve some of the liquid to pasteurize for making chevre, similar in taste and texture to cream cheese. Cheese must be aged 60 to 90 days or made from pasteurized milk, according to state regulations.

Mrs. Bradley has been using a home pasteurizer with a thermometer, but new regulations proposed by the Texas Department of State Health Service’s Milk Group concern her. The proposals include a requirement that dairy operators use a commercial pasteurizer, which start at about $8,000 to $10,000, said Gene Wright, group director of the DSHS Milk Group. Some commercial pasteurizers cost as much as $25,000, Mrs. Bradley said.

Wright said the proposal comes in response to food safety legislation passed in 2007 by the Texas Legislature at the Department of State Health Service’s request. Regulatory changes will make practices in Texas consistent with those across the rest of the United States, Wright said.

Mrs. Bradley paid $104 for the food manufacturing permit she needs to make cheese in 2009 and 2010. If the proposed new regulations are enacted, however, she will pay $1,800 every two years: $800 for the cheesemaking permit, $800 for a Grade A dairy permit and $200 for a “producers” permit.

Mrs. Bradley believes increased fees and a requirement to purchase commercial equipment will impose a significant burden on small artisan cheesemakers.

Wright said the state Milk Group simply needs to follow the definition for “pasteurizer” that applies nationally.

“In the national standards, a pasteurizer is a pasteurizer,” Wright said. “Like most food safety issues, the regulations do not vary with the size of the operation.”

Wright added that an implementation date for new rules has not been set.

“So far, the cheese rules appear to be uncontroversial,” he said. “I have yet to hear any complaints.”

With secure fences to maintain, animal diseases to guard against and kids to bottle feed -- several times daily until weaning begins at three months old -- a goat dairy can be as difficult, or even harder, to maintain than a cow operation, Mrs. Bradley said.

“People don’t realize how laborintensive goats are,” she said.

Mrs. Bradley and her husband hope for cooperative working relationships with regulators, but the Bradleys said adapting to changing state requirements has been difficult.

“They’re doing the best they can to shut the small farmer down,” said Bradley, “and it’s happening all over the United States.”

The increasing demand for unpasteurized “raw milk,” however, is one development that excites the Lampasas-area dairy owners. The purported health benefits of raw milk, Bradley said, are driving sales of everything from milk to whey to kefir (pronounced KEE fur), a liquid that tastes similar to buttermilk and is believed to improve digestive health.

A fact sheet produced by the Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance, an Austin-based non-profit organization that represents non-corporate agricultural producers in 45 states, cites studies indicating that raw milk may offer relief from asthma and allergies, and may mitigate behavioral problems in children. Proponents also claim raw milk can be consumed by lactose intolerant drinkers and retains vitamins that can be damaged during pasteurization, according to the FARFA fact sheet.

About seven months after he began drinking raw milk, Bradley stopped taking the weekly allergy shots he had been taking.

The demand for raw milk has grown so high, Mrs. Bradley said, that she believes some farmers sell milk illegally to skirt regulations. A study she and other dairy owners conducted indicated as many as one million gallons of goat milk may be sold illegally in Texas this year.

“Everybody who has three goats, a coffee can and a fruit jar is selling goat milk, because people are on this raw milk kick,” Mrs. Brad- ley said.

Food safety advocates, however, believe pasteurization rids milk of pathogens without altering the liquid’s nutritional properties.

“The nutritional benefits are slight to unsubstantiated, and the risks are significant,” Wright said of raw milk.

The Milk Group manager conceded, however, that in the last 20 or 25 years no illnesses or deaths in Texas have been linked definitively to raw milk consumption. The lack of correlation could be linked to underreporting or to Texas’ relatively low volume of raw milk sales, Wright said.

The Bradleys believe small dairies like theirs typically maintain cleaner and safer conditions than large, industrialized operations.

Groups of schoolchildren occasionally visit the farm, and parents sign consent forms before their children begin touring the dairy, Mrs. Bradley said.

The Bradleys also have built a loyal customer base, who purchase not only milk and cheese but also kefir and whey -- used for making bread and fermenting vegetables.

As farm labor continues and the Bradleys confront possible regulatory changes, Mrs. Bradley has no plans of amassing a fortune from the dairy. Her goats, her “girls,” however, remain the stars of the show.