Are there any risks or drawbacks to breeding my Nigerian does to a buck from another breed? I have some family members who are interested in a few goats for the freezer and had the thought that a larger breed buck would give them more meat while my wife and I would still get the milk we want. My father knows a guy who has nubians but I'm afraid they might be too big. I'm also concerned about my does health during pregnancy
You need to be a member of Nigerian Dwarf Dairy Goats to add comments!
Replies
Don`t breed a Nigerian doe with a larger breed buck. It will end up a c section at best. Death at worst. Nigerian buck with a larger doe is safe.
Permalink Reply by CainO 18 minutes agoDelete
I understand and agree, That why I said I bought female Kikos. All my males are Nigerian.
I've only been doing goats for 10 years, so I don't claim to be an expert; but i understand Kikos were originally milk goats... they have just been bread to become more of a meat goat. I like the manageable size of the Nigerians; but they are not a meat goat, and my friend never milks them like he said he would and wanted to. So that's why I decided to go in the meat direction; but I also don't want them to be too big. So I got Spanish/Kiko nannies, to bread with the Nigerian bucks.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought it to be a win win for a medium sized meat/milk goat; even though we will probably never milk them.
Please do NOT do this. You are asking for trouble if you breed a female Nigerian to a meat goat like a Kiko. An average Nigerian kid weighs about 3 pounds. A kiko kid weighs about 9 pounds. There is NO way a Nigerian doe can give birth to a kid that big.
There was someone on this group a few years back who bought what was supposed to be an unregistered Nigerian buck, and since she was new, she didn't know what was normal for a ND buckling size. She bred him to a ND doe, and the buck just kept growing and growing, and it became obvious that the seller had lied to her. That poor little doe wound up with a 7-pound kid that had to be delivered by c-section.
Even IF a doe gives birth vaginally to a big kid, there is no guarantee that she will survive. I had a purebred ND almost bleed to death after giving birth to a 5# kid because of internal tearing, and she gave birth unassisted. She spent a week at university vet hospital, and even when I brought her home, she didn't look like she was going to make it. They told me that if she were ever bred again, she'd have to have a c-section because she had too much scar tissue inside.
And kikos are NOT milk goats. Of course all goats make milk, but kikos are bred for meat production, not milk production, and there is a huge difference.
I've been raising goats for 20 years and helping others raise goats for 10+ years, and I've heard way too many horror stories to ever try something like this.
If you do decide to try, you need to know how much a c-section is going to cost and where you can take a goat 24 hours a day to get it done.
I'm not a goat expert, but I have herd what the other two say. I have seen people breed Kiko males and Nubian males with female Nigerians, but the other way around would obviously be better. I myself have had Nigerians, but I just got some Kiko/Spanish goat nannies; I plan to have Niko's in the near future. I like the Spanish goats, because they are a tad smaller then Kiko's and they are more parasite resistant for my area. My friend had Nigerians for milk goats, but he never milks them... So I am going in the direction of meat goats. However, however; Kiko's are also milk goats. So the Niko would be what I think to be a better milk/meat goat.
Biggest risk is having oversize kids and birthing problems. I have had accidental breedings with full size goats and Nigerians that turned out all right (unknown until kidding) but I would never do it on purpose. I would recommend getting a mini doe and breeding it to Nigerian bucks.
I would definitely NOT breed an ND doe to a larger buck. ND kids are typically 2-3 pounds when born. I also raise mini manchas, which are a cross between a la mancha doe and a ND buck. Those kids are 6-7 pounds! If you want mini dairy goats, you would cross an ND buck with a doe from a larger breed.
The only possible drawback to that is if you have a standard dairy goat with a great production, she is going to make more milk than a couple of mini kids can consume, so you might need to milk her. We have to milk one of our la manchas because she peaks at 2 gallons a day, and if we don't milk her, she drives her babies crazy, not letting them sleep and pushing them towards her udder all the time. We basically milk her once a day and let the kids nurse 24/7.
We've butchered NDs and la manchas. By six or seven months, they can be as big as 50 pounds live weight, which comes out to about 15 pounds of meat for us and 15 pounds of bones for the dog. Yearlings can be closer to 50 pounds hanging weight, but you've had to take them through winter with hay, which I don't like to do. We sent a mini mancha wether to the locker with two older ND wethers, and we didn't know which was which after processing because their weights were within a few pounds of each other. If you get a Nubian doe, however, you'd probably get better weight because they are meatier than la manchas.