Enough to matter, less than a full-size dairy goat, and richer than either — with a commitment attached.
Nigerian Dwarfs are a true dairy breed in a very small package, and the milk is the reason a lot of people choose them. It is also the part most often oversold, so here is the realistic version.
A good Nigerian Dwarf doe in full milk generally gives somewhere between about half a litre and a litre and a half a day, with most sitting near the middle of that. Exceptional does go higher, first fresheners usually give less, and yield climbs after the first few weeks, peaks, then tapers across the lactation.
That sounds modest next to a Saanen giving four or five litres, and it is. What makes up for it is butterfat. Nigerian Dwarf milk typically tests somewhere in the range of six to ten per cent butterfat, roughly double a standard dairy goat. That is the headline number and it is the reason the milk tastes rich rather than thin, why it makes good cheese with a decent yield, and why it works so well for soap.
Practically: two does in milk will keep a household in drinking milk, yoghurt and a weekly batch of soft cheese, with enough left over to annoy the dog with. Three or four and you are into hard cheese territory.
Milk requires a doe who has kidded. There is no shortcut around that. It means a joining, a five-month pregnancy, a kidding, and then a milking routine.
The routine is the part people underestimate. Twice a day, roughly twelve hours apart, for months. It does not move for your weekend plans, your work trip or a wet Sunday morning. Once a doe is well into lactation and her kids are weaned or separated overnight, many people move to once a day, which is a genuine relief but produces less milk.
A single milking on a small doe takes only a few minutes once you and she both know what you are doing. The rest of it — setting up, washing the stand, straining, cooling, cleaning the gear properly — is the real time cost, and it is the same whether you milk one doe or three. Budget twenty to thirty minutes a session at the start, less once you have a rhythm.
You will also need somewhere clean to do it, a stand that holds her comfortably, a stainless bucket, filters, jars and a fridge with space in it. Milk quality is mostly a function of how quickly you cool it and how well you clean.
Milk comes with kids attached, and that is the piece people skip past when they are imagining the jug on the bench. Every lactation means two or three kids to raise, and then to place. Doelings usually find homes. Buck kids mostly do not, and you need to have decided in advance whether they will be wethered and sold as pets, or whether you have another plan for them. Working that out before the doe is joined is much easier than working it out in spring with four kids on the ground.
No. You need access to one.
Bucks in rut smell genuinely appalling, need their own secure fencing and their own companion, and are a substantial commitment for one job a year. Most small breeders are better off arranging a joining elsewhere, either by taking the doe to a buck or by using artificial insemination.
If you go the drive-and-drop route, expect to leave her for a few weeks, and expect the buck's owner to ask about your herd health status — a reasonable question that goes both ways. Ask what testing they do before you send a doe anywhere.
Nigerian Dwarfs are one of the breeds that can cycle year round rather than only in autumn, which gives some flexibility in when you kid and lets a couple of does be staggered so you are not without milk for months. Most people in southern Australia still aim for spring kidding, so that the doe is milking hardest when the feed is at its best. Along the Victorian coast that means joining through late autumn and winter, and kids hitting the ground into the good grass.
A milking doe needs more than a paddock. Good hay, a suitable dairy ration fed on the stand, loose minerals, and clean water in front of her all the time. Drop the feed and the milk drops with it, and she will pull condition off her own back to keep producing, which is not something you want to let happen twice.
If you want a small amount of very good milk, and you like a routine, a couple of does is a genuine delight. The milk is better than anything you can buy, the animals are pleasant to be around, and the rhythm of it suits a lot of people.
If you want milk without the commitment, buy it. There is no shame in that, and we would rather say so than sell you a doe you cannot serve. If you are somewhere in between, start with wethers, learn goats for a year, and come back for a doe when you know what you are taking on.