Milk Batches & Products
Milk that leaves the milk room becomes something. Batches connect production to product.
Batches
A batch groups milk set aside for a purpose — a cheese make, a soap run, milk sold raw where that's legal, or milk fed back to kids.
Recording batches answers questions that per-doe production alone can't: how much of your output is actually being sold, how much goes to kids, and what a given cheese make consumed.
Products
Products are what the batches become — cheese, soap, yogurt, butter, fudge. Track what you made, how much, and what it sold for.
Product sales flow through to income, so value-added revenue shows up alongside goat sales rather than being invisible.
Why Bother
For most farms the useful realization is that value-added products are worth more per gallon than raw milk by a wide margin, and the only way to know your actual margin is to track what the milk cost you and what the product earned.
Raw milk, cheese, and other dairy sales are governed by state and national rules that vary enormously — some allow farm-gate raw milk sales, some ban them outright, some require licensed facilities for anything aged. Herd Manager tracks your production; it doesn't know your jurisdiction's rules. Check before you sell.