Does anyone keep their buck with the herd fulltime?
Will he stay permanantly in rut?
Will he settle & be a gentleman??
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Does anyone keep their buck with the herd fulltime?
Will he stay permanantly in rut?
Will he settle & be a gentleman??
You need to be a member of Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats to add comments!
Replies
I agree with everything Rachel said. I've heard some pretty horrible stories about tethered goats.
Some people buy does and then wait to buy bucks (or a buck and a wether) until they're actually ready to start breeding.
When we first got goats, we got three does and a buck, an we put together four livestock panels in the pasture, so the does were around him, but he couldn't get to them (and vice versa). That takes about 15 minutes to set up, and four livestock panels are cheap. I'd still suggest getting a wether as a friend though because he escaped quite a few times. Young ND bucks can sometimes jump livestock panels, but they outgrow the ability to do that as they get larger.
Deb Blake-Satchel said:
It's really not safe for them to be tethered without supervision. It leaves them vulnerable to getting tangled or attacked by dogs or other predators.
As a suggestion, you can usually find used chain link dog kennels pretty cheap on craigslist. I have one I use as a quarantine pen. That and a dog house would be a safer solution while you work on permanent fencing.
Deb Blake-Satchel said:
Can a buck be tethered on a long enough line?
fencing takes time....
It's really not a good idea. You will have doelings getting pregnant way too early and could wind up needing c-sections. Your senior does would wind up getting pregnant way too often, which would not be good for their health because pregnancy is a big drain on them, and they need a few months to recover and put weight back on. Good milk producers can get really underweight by two months after the kids are born. Also, you won't be getting much milk if the does are pregnant all of the time.
Plus, your milk will probably be stinky because the bucks like to rub on the does.
Most people have at least two bucks anyway so that they can keep daughters and breed them to an unrelated buck -- or at least not their father. If you have two or more bucks, you can keep them in their own pen, far from the does so that you don't wind up with any accidental breedings.