Polled and double teets?

 I have two questions today.

The first is: I have two goats that are a Nigerian Dwarf mix that are polled. They both gave birth this year to little boys. One each. My question is the babies are growing hair covered bumps but at 5 weeks and 3 weeks there is no visible horn just hair covered bumps.  Do I disbud or wait?  Their moms both have predominant hair covered bumps.  From my understanding polled is a dominant gene. 

The second being:  One of these mother's has double teets.  Both of them!  I know this is an undesirable trait and this year her first year she threw a boy so we are just going to wether him.  My question is do i breed and milk her again or keep her as a pasture pet?  She is a good milker and with a pump the double teet causes no problems.  What would/have any of you done?  (She is a mixed breed so can not be papered and she is being breed by good papered bucks. Just a little info for the second generation line)

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  • 2771471156?profile=original

    This is an 8-week-old polled doe. You can see her poll bumps are already looking rather prominent.

    2771471673?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024

    This is a picture of the hair swirls that you see on a horned kid's head.

  • Julia,

    Thanks for the photo!

    I think we probably have horns, but we will give it a few more days. Points such as in you photo still haven't shown themselves, and we remain hopeful she is polled. Were it not for the fact that the sire is polled and the new identical twins which are half sisters  to our doe in question (by him) also are polled, we would have hit the buds with the iron a week ago. (Hmm, that sentence was sort of clumsy, but you probably get the idea.)

    -Michael


    Julia @Woody Glen Farm said:

    Here is a picture of my girl who I thought was polled because the horn buds didn't show up for 3 weeks. As you can see, there is the bigger hump,  but you can see the small horn bud starting to pop through.2771470548?profile=original

  • Here is a picture of my girl who I thought was polled because the horn buds didn't show up for 3 weeks. As you can see, there is the bigger hump,  but you can see the small horn bud starting to pop through.2771470548?profile=original

  • Horns are pointy. When in doubt, wait! You can always disbud later if you discover you're wrong. But if you disbud a polled goat, it will cause a lot of problems down the road for you because you won't be expecting her to throw polled kids. Although it happens rarely, you do have scurred polled goats once in awhile. However, ALL polled goats have bumps. Some are bigger than others, but they all have bumps of some size.
  • This little doe is 3 weeks old exactly. Her sire is polled. I know that that means she has a 50% chance of being polled. We never could see a swirl of hair around the horn buds, but the lumps have grown. I clipped her to get ready to disbud, but thought that at three weeks her horn should be pointy; these buds are just round. Is this just because it is a doe and not a buck and things are developing more slowly? I don't have any problem with disbudding, but I don't want to disbud a kid that is polled (or even semi-polled, assuming that there is such a thing as a polled goat that still develops rudimentary horns). HELP me please. Should we get the iron hot tomorrow morning?

    Our friend here says that if the little bump has a shiny top, we should disbud, and this sure seems to fall into that category.

    Comments soon please!

    FullSizeRender 4.jpg

  • The kids are definitely polled. The 5-week-old kid would have horns that are 1-2 inches long and VERY pointy by now! And your 3-week-old would have obviously pointy horn buds. Congratulations on no disbudding your first year!

    That is totally up to you on what to do with the doe who has four teats. Since she is not registered, it's just a matter of utility, so if the extra teats are not causing a milking problem, you could breed her again. Definitely wether any bucklings that she has, and inform potential buyers of her doelings that mama has extra teats. But since she's not registered, buyers may not care much.

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