These two things are really helping make my goat life much more bearable.
Dave put one of these milkers together for me. A hand vacuum pump from Harbor freight, tubing, fittings and a canning jar with lid. This milk is from Nikki, the momma that gave birth early this morning. In the morning, I milked nearly a pint, at about 3pm, nearly a quart. This was just taking the pressure off her, and was milked in a matter of minutes. Nice, clean milk for the 2 day old bottle baby I have in the house. I put the pint of fresh colostrum in the freezer for an emergency.
I used this on Sis, my doe that kidded a couple days ago. I also was able to get much more good usable milk. I didn't get nearly as much milk from Sis, but she doesn't have the strong LaMancha genes that Nikki does. It still worked so much easier for me than trying to hand milk. The milk is nice and clean, which is not my experience hand milking.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so the saying goes.
I knew there were bottle buckets for feeding multiple calves and kids at a time, but my kids are young, and I don't feed them large quantities at a time. I brought this old VHS movie shelf out of the basement and used a hole saw to cut holes for the bottles. The shelves are V shaped, so this worked great. I have the bottles weighted down with a fabric bag filled with grain. This really makes my life easier! It's hard to satisfy 3-5 hungry little babies at one time. They are getting used to it quick. No more pushing and shoving and jumping all over me. So nice!
