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I am fortunate where I live to have convenient access to high quality, farm fresh milk from both cows and goats for reasonable prices. My family enjoys both types of dairy although each member of the family tends to have a preference if given the choice of one over the other.
One of my kids asked me the other day about goat milk versus cow milk and which was better than the other. Great question!
Goat Milk Advantages
The most significant difference between goat milk and cow milk is that fresh, unpasteurized cow milk forms a distinct creamline at the top and goat milk does not. The reason is that goat milk is naturally homogenized which means the fat molecules are smaller than in cow milk and so remain evenly dispersed throughout the milk. Incidentally, sheep milk is also naturally homogenized.
The smaller size of the fat globules seems to make goat milk more digestible for some people but not all.  I personally find no difference in digestibility between the two.
While the protein structure of cow and goat milk is fairly similar, goat milk is missing an alpha casein present in cow’s milk. In addition, when you drink a glass of goat milk and it reacts with the acid in your stomach, the protein curds that precipitate are smaller in size and a bit softer than the ones that form with cow’s milk. This is another reason some folks find goat milk to be more easily digested than cow milk.
Cow Milk Advantages
Cow milk is higher is vitamin B12 which so many people are severely deficient in. Goat milk also lacks folic acid making cow milk more suitable for homemade infant formula in the event the mother cannot breastfeed.
Cow milk is also higher in B6 making it a better choice for pregnant mothers who have morning sickness.  I myself suffered from B6 deficiency morning sickness and so found sipping fresh cow milk during the first trimester to bring immediate and welcome relief. Incidentally, B6 is destroyed by pasteurization so any sort of heat treated or pasteurized milk will not help in this regard. The milk must be farm fresh and preferably grassfed.
The Weston A. Price Foundation recommends adding 2 teaspoons organic raw chicken liver, frozen for 14 days, finely grated to each batch of the milk based formula if goat milk is used and encourages egg yolk feeding for babies to begin no later than four months old.  If cow milk is used, egg yolk feeding can be started later if desired at 6 months.
Cow milk is usually more readily available than goat milk and is typically a lower cost per gallon making it more suitable for tighter budgets.
Sometimes I’ve heard folks say that they prefer the taste of cow milk because goat milk tastes goaty, but in my experience, goaty tasting goat milk is more a result of quality than anything. The goat milk I buy doesn’t taste goaty unless it is more than a week old (and then it only gets a slight goaty taste) and is generally very similar in taste to cow milk.
Goat Milk vs Cow Milk?
Ultimately, the choice of whether to drink fresh cow or goat milk is a personal preference. In my home, I have both available and while I prefer cow milk, I do enjoy goat milk kefir for my smoothies just to mix things up a bit and provide more variety to my diet. For straight drinking, my husband prefers goat milk but loves cow milk cream on his fruit. My kids generally prefer cow milk although they don’t mind a glass of goat milk when it is really fresh.
So what did I answer my child when he asked whether one milk was better than the other? I told him that it was kind of like the difference between turkey and chicken. They are both yummy and healthy and it’s perfectly ok to prefer one over the other or even drink both if you want to!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
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Sources and More Information
Oh, the goat milk stories I can tell. 🙂 But I’ll spare you and just tell a couple. LOL! We’ve been breeding and using dairy goats for over 30 years (used to show, etc., too) so we’ve been using goat milk a long time. Our sons grew up on it (one is now 6’2″ and the other 6’4″). But we also have cows and we use cow milk, too (raw cow milk all of our lives, even before goats). I prefer doing butter with the cow milk cream because it’s just easier to get off of the milk even though we do have cream separators. They are messy to clean up so I just get cream off the cow milk. My husband discovered years ago that when he drinks the goat milk, he becomes desensitized to the poison ivy/sumac. He used to react something horrible – just walking through woods and he would break out when no one else does and blister something awful. I’ve had times where I had to lead him around like a blind man because he broke out on his face and his eyes were swollen shut (from logging in the woods with our mules). It is truly awful. The goats eat the ivy and he drinks the milk and he doesn’t break out as long as he’s doing that. Earlier this spring he had the goats shut up so they weren’t able to wander the woods like normal (we have hundreds of acres around us). He had a job he did for a friend and he broke out (not real bad, tho). The first time in years. So he turned the goats loose again and he’s been doing fine so far. He also tells me that he can tell a difference in his energy level between the cow and goat milk – the goat milk is better, he says. His work is very physical and he’s pushing 60 years old (we have our 40 acre homestead and a trash pickup business, both of which involve a lot of picking up heavy things all day). If he notices a difference, I believe him. We have a friend who used to suffer from migraines and ulcers. Doctors didn’t think he’s was going to live to be very old and he was very thin. He met us and then got some goats and started drinking the goat milk. Next thing we knew, he was buying reg. dairy goats and showing and was looking better. He told me later that his migraines had stopped and his ulcers were gone after he started drinking the goat milk, and that was why he jumped into the goats so seriously. That was back in the 80’s. Today he is still alive, still showing goats, and on his second wife…he outlived the first one. He’s getting up there in years as he older than us. Another goat showing friend (and if there’s anyone on here who knows anything about the Nubian breed they will recognize the herd name Price O the Field) was born into an Amish family. She was premature and sickly and her mother had no milk. They raised her on goat’s milk and she credits it with saving her life. When she married, she had 12 children, including two sets of identical twin girls – and not one complication with pregnancy, etc. Of course, she and her husband had Nubian goats. Those kids grew up on goat milk and now most of the grandkids are, too. I have lots more stories of people who had health issues resolved or were infants raised on goat milk. Nothing added to the milk, either. I believe that what the goats are eating also affects its benefits. They are browsers, not grazers, and tend to not pick up parasites as easily if they aren’t forced to graze by lack of browse. They also eat the bark on trees where the minerals are at (like a deer). They eat vines/ivy with oils that you will not get in cow’s milk. Tests that have been done on goats milk have not included milk that was from goats roaming woods like our’s do and getting a huge variety of above-ground plant life. As we know that grassfed beef is better for you and different from commercial beef from feedlots, same for the milk….what you feed MATTERS. And those studies were not done with browsing goats, but with hay/alfalfa/commercial feed/etc. goats, you can just about bet on it because finding a truly browsing herd to test is not easy to do. One other thing about goat milk, they utilize their beta-carotene better than cows and that’s why their milk is so white while cow milk (especially milk like Jersey) has a yellow shade to it. Now, that’s for cows grazing, not commercial dairy cows in lots. Their milk will be whiter ’cause they’re not getting the green stuff in a pasture. As for our cows, I can taste the *cow* in their milk and smell it. I can tell the difference between the two milks by looking at them and smelling them. Goat milk should be the sweetest, best tasting milk you’ve ever had. If it is off-flavored, something is wrong – our experience has been wormy goats have goaty flavored milk. Milking *clean* is also a must for good tasting milk….and getting that milk COLD as soon as possible makes a huge difference. We don’t feed any commercial feeds/corn/etc. to our goats – they get a handful of whole oats on the milk stand and that’s it (just to reward them for getting on the stand). In the winter they get some alfalfa hay (and sometimes we have ryegrass/wheat pastures for them to eat on in the winters). And they browse year round. We eat our goats, too. This is BROWSING goat meat and is not the same as goats being fattened on commercial feeds, corn, etc. which most are. Just like with the beef/bison/chickens/etc. We don’t “fatten” our goats before butchering. They all run together in the woods until the day they are butchered. They are basically eating the same diet out there as the wild deer are. We eat a lot of goat meat. The stew meat is tender and mild and I love cooking with it.
Do you have a list of raw goats milk sources in Wisconsin? If I use Goats milk instead of raw milk in the formula does that mean that I also take out the whey and cream that I get from the raw milk?
Some goats milk has a cream line. I don’t know if it means it is less homogonized than “regular” goats milk of if it just has a lot more cream. I get my goats milk in 2 qt jars and it will sometimes have 3-4 inches of cream at the top of the jar. Even more than the jersey cows milk we get.
You also didn’t talk about the A1 vs A2 issue. Goats milk is only ever A2 milk but cows milk may be A1 or a mixture of A1 and A2. No breed guarantees A2 milk although some are more likely than others to have it. Since my children’s milk allergies have been healed on GAPS they still can’t tolerate cows milk except very occasionally as cheese or as kefired cream. My older dd with ASD is the most affected by the cows milk.
I can’t wait to have a pregnancy on my real food diet. I know the morning sickness and excessive bleeding postpartum were results of my inferior diet.
Also, I want to respectfully point out (as this can be a touchy subject) that the ideal food for human infants is human milk. The WHO recommends as a 2nd alternative to the mother’s milk is a donor’s milk. Human Milk 4 Human Babies is now a global network of moms who are literally saving lives with their donation of breastmilk!
Hi Crystal, the reason I don’t promote breastmilk donor banks is that the vast majority of breastfeeding Moms do not follow a Real Food diet and hence their breastmilk is inferior to homemade baby formula from grassfed cows. Sad but true. I breastfed my own children for extended periods of time (over 3 years ) and am a strong advocate of breastfeeding, yet I would NEVER have used a donor breastmilk bank for my children had I not been able to breastfeed. I would have made my own homemade formula from cows on unsprayed pasture. Just too risky that the Mom donating the milk ate fast food, drank coffee, took over the counter meds or whatever. WAY too risky.
Sarah,
Just want to tell you that I appreciate all the time you take to provide this wonderful website for all of us! It is very helpful to me and for the health of my family! Hope God blesses you with many healthy years.
Thanks,
Jean
Hi Jean, you are very welcome! 🙂 It really means a lot when folks email and tell me how much the info is helping them navigate the minefield of misleading health info out there.
Cows that produce 100 percent A2 milk is has good if not better than goat’s milk. The problem I’ve found with goat’s milk is that the goats are fed corn and soy in their feed. Goats have more issues with parasites than do cows.
Wish I had know how to make my own infant formula 4 years ago when my youngest born. She was the only one I was not able to nurse. Would have jumped on this!! I shared your link on my page. Thanks!
Just wondering if you had a reference for the B6/morning sickness connection you made mention of. I have several friends who are dealing with morning sickness and would like to provide them with some information. Also, I know several of them (okay all) will not drink raw milk when they are pregnant bc…well…their doctor told them not too. Just wondering if there are additional sources for B6 that you could also recommend?
Hi Emily, I cannot remember where I read this. Probably one of the many pregnancy books I’ve read but can’t remember which one. I did tons of raw dairy while I was pregnant with my second and third children. Don’t know what I would have done without it! Nothing else worked like the raw milk for my nausea! I even tried B6 supplements to no avail. Supplements in isolation are not a good idea generally speaking anyway. I question how well any of that stuff is digested. Obviously not very well in my case .. so glad the raw milk was available.
I was also given B6 for my morning sickness (synthetic, of course) but it didn’t help at all. I found alfalfa pills much more helpful. I took about 6 tablets each day, broken up into small pieces so that I could gulp them down. Helped me with the regularity issues, too 🙂 More recently I’ve started taking Dr. Ben Kim’s vitamin B supplement (Folate, B6, B12 with food cofactors that aren’t known or measured) which all food-derived and I notice a huge difference in how I feel taking it. I’ve run out and now feel very run down. It also doesn’t turn my urine bright yellow so I know I’m not flushing unused synthetic vitamins out of my system like I notice when taking those. I’v thought that might be helpful to mothers suffering from morning sickness. Not planning to test that theory out on myself though 🙂
Marta, I have a goat share program in VA and have had several autistic children on our milk. We have also had celiacs, lactose intolerants, and shareholders with crohns disease. All have done very well on goat’s milk & goat milk kefir. Please pardon any misspellings. My eyes are tired tonight.
What I find most interesting is that goat milk is the only specific milk mentionedin the Bible…Proverbs 27:27. 😀
I like the explanation you gave to your kids… can you provide more of these analogies sometime?