Hi all..
Just hoping for some insight on Truffle. I weighed her yesterday and she is now at 45#, she is a year and 2 months old.
After her C Section at the beginning of June she weight 42#, so she put on 3 # over the summer.
I recently stumbled across a nice buck who is smaller than the one I just bought (my new buck is 23" and I am waiting for an exact measurement on this buck but he is under 23" and throws small babies) I asked if they would be willing to stud him for Truffle this winter if I breed her- and they are
I was thinking of doing it in December, which would be 7 months after her surgery, she would be 17 months old if I am adding right. What are people's opinions on trying to breed her? Since the C Section I have heard one breeder say they had a 6# baby from two papered parents and her belief was that the doe was responsible for the size of the babies, not the buck.
However, Miyagi is 1.5 yr old and stands 24" at the withers and his rear end also towers over Bliss when they stand next to each other. This goes back to the conversation where Deborah was pointing out that some "high withered" animals measure tall but aren't really that "big". Bliss has high withers but he's not really big. Miyagi is BIG. So I feel like the whopper baby is really all his fault.
at any rate I figured it might be easier on Truffle if I found a smallish buck for her and the bonus being that if she has a buckling kid I can use that buckling on Bliss' daughters.
Thoughts, anyone? I have never heard a definite length of time for how long to wait after a C Section to breed. I milked her for about two months (maybe less) then dried her off because she wasn't eating well or holding or weight/condition. I've gotten her condition back up now.
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Well...that does it then. She can stay on vacation for awhile. If she wasn't so pretty and SO sweet and the most cooperative animal on my farm hands down I probably would never breed her period and just let her be the mascot. But I sure would like to get some of her sweetness multiplied especially when the alternative is Penny, the crotchetiest old milk goat ever!
It is never a good idea to breed a doe that is not in top physical condition, so it sounds like you should probably wait. Although she might look great by December. And with Nigerians, you don't always have to wait a whole year. You could breed her in April for fall kidding. I like having a doe or two kid in fall to be sure I have milk 12 months a year.
Well I can say this for sure, getting fat is not on her agenda right now. In fact I am having to feed her grain to keep her looking okay, and the older girls eat nothing but pasture and some crappy grass hay in the stall and they look like blimps. She finally stopped looking outright bony when I dried her off but I don't see extra weight AT ALL. I partly think it is because she spends so much time flirting with the boys across the farm and not grazing.
I don't know what this woman meant by the doe causing the kid size...so I can't give insight there.
Deborah as for how she healed from the C Section...she appears good as new to the naked eye. Do you think it would be worthwhile to take her in to the vet and have them examine her? Would they be able to tell me something useful about scarring or anything?
At this time, for my peace of mind I may just let her sit for a year. Like I said, I don't really need her bred, it would be nice, but...meh. I have had enough stress and excitement in the past 6 months to last me a life time and part of me thinks it's just not worth worrying myself over her. I am leaning toward just not doing it. I know no one has a crystal ball but I also know I am way less experienced with all this than a lot of people on here...so I just dont' want to make a newbie mistake at her expense AGAIN like I did not putting the buck far enough away and he tagged her at 5 months!
Thanks for everyone's input
I've only had one doe with a c-section, and she was seven at the time. The vet said there was no reason to not breed her to kid again a year later. I was a little worried because she was older -- so the opposite of your situation. But this is one of my favorite does, and I really really wanted another doe from her, so I bred her and she kidded just fine this year at age 8 ... although she had a whopper-sized single doeling at 155 days. Single kid + 155 days = big kid!
I think it really depends on the individual doe. If she is healthy and in good shape, you could wind up with an overweight doe if you skip a year. That is a very common problem with dry does. And overweight does tend to have fertility problems. I have one right now that is not getting pregnant. It can be a slippery slope -- a doe doesn't get pregnant and starts getting fat, and the fatter she gets, the more of a fertility problem she has. And this one has been on pasture all summer! I can't imagine how a goat can be so fat on pasture!
That's really odd that someone would say that the doe is responsible for the size of the kids -- unless she meant the doe's diet? There is no reason that the doe's genetics would have any more effect on the size of a kid than the buck's when it comes to size. Maybe in HER case, the doe was bigger and passed on her genetics to the big kid?
The one thing I can tell you for sure is that you can second guess yourself on this for the next three months -- and in the end it all comes down to Truffle, her body condition, how she healed after her c-section, her genetics and the genetics of the buck you breed her to, etc., and no one has a crystal ball to give you the exact right answer for her.
This opinion comes with the caveat that I know nothing about it. I would wait a full two years for her as I would count the birth and the c-section trauma as two pregnancies for spacing purposes. A guideline might be what good doctors recommend for women; I cannot imagine a doctor saying it would be okay for a woman to deliver another baby that close to a c-section. Think of it like what you would like your daughter to do if she were to have an emergency c-section.
Wow, that is terribly sad and scary. I am glad she survived that ordeal.
LOL, know that feeling, but planning that far ahead can be good. It sometimes forces you to think of things that may not otherwise occur to you when you just handle things as they come. Proof, you are coming up with optional plans, see? It can be tricky, trying to figure out how to handle keeping does and then having something to breed them to.
I was actually only planning to get 1 buck to start with and just fell in love with two different ones, so I got them both. I can't imagine what I thought I was going to do with all my little does. I think if I remember right I must have been going to buy another buck when the kids were born to go with those does. At any rate I am very glad that I didn't wait and have two boys to split my girls up with since I have so many. Next time I will probably swap the girls to the opposite bucks and then compare the resulting offspring to see which matches produced the best results.
One thing that I did do to get a bit of an idea as to what the different gene mixes would produce was to pair my half-sisters with different bucks. Although I have no full siblings, I do have three sets of 2 does who have the same sires, so I bred one from each of the different sets to Quill and then I bred the 3 half sisters to Oak. Not sure if that will help, but hoping it will eventually help me to decide which buck improves which does , and in what areas they make the greatest improvements. We'll see!
hmm you have a good point about 2 kiddings in 2 years. I guess I was thinking that the 1st one would impact her less since she didn't really have a lactation afterward but THEN it occured to me that the surgery itself would have been a huge trauma for her body that would not be made up for by not lactating.
I will theoretically have 3 other does kidding next spring which will be plenty of daughters and milk...I don't need Truffle, except for that she could produce me a buck to use on Bliss' daughters with Penny and Annie (who are twin sisters). The 3rd doe is the mini-mancha who will be bred to Miyagi whose bucklings I obviously can't use on the other girls, they are a loss. But I can breed those daughters to Bliss
However, if this farm is willing to let me come use their bucks for a fee, I can just as easily take bliss's daughters up there (a year and a half from now, mind you--talk about planning ahead lol)
Well, I am by no means an expert, and as we all know opinions very widely about everything, but I have read that when bred as yearlings they should then be rested through a season without being bred. And since she was so young I am sure a lot of people would not breed her at all this time.
A lot of people I know of will not even breed them until they are 18 months regardless of weight. This would put her at under 2 years with 2 kiddings under her belt. As for the 7 months after the surgery part, I don't KNOW, but I would THINK that, that would probably be long enough.
Could be nice to use a different buck for the reasons you suggest but I hope he isn't to little. You don't want them to start getting smaller and smaller. And if they have does, you don't want them to small for sure.
It seems that I have got a really small buck on my hands and I am getting a little nervous about that. I think I am going to go measure him right now because this has been bugging me for a while.