How often to breed

Deborah Niemann-Boehle January 2, 2017 at 11:29pm

I was explaining the history behind the practice. I have seen 8-month breeding discussed as a way of increasing profits at a sheep and goat conference, and I've seen it discussed on Facebook groups for sheep breeds that can be bred year-round. Even with meat animals, the once-a-year breeding seems to be more common, but there are those who push the 3 times in two years for maximum profit. Since the only "product" is offspring, some pet goat breeders have adopted this same practice.

I tend to over-explain things sometimes because this site gets about 9,000 visitors per month, most of which never ask a question, so I try to make sure that those people don't go away with any incorrect assumptions.

If people want milk goats, I actually don't recommend that they buy the most expensive goats, especially from show herds because show wins don't equate to milk production. Serious breeders keep milking records, even if they're not on official milk test, because they will use those milk records to make their own breeding decisions.

Kimberly Crawmer January 2, 2017 at 10:07pm

I think I wasn't clear enough about what she does. From what I can tell she bred once a year the first year and then she's bred to where they are kidding every 8-9 months after that, give or take. So that's 3 times in 2 years. Some less often and an occasional more. This is just going by what she posts on her website so I don't know her reasoning and there's a chance some of the dates are wrong. In at least one instance it has to be wrong because she has a doe kidding 4 months after the last kidding! Maybe she's just trying to build her herd or get the goats on a schedule that suits her, idk. Or maybe it is for profit. She also breeds Dexter cattle and she milks both the cows and the goats but perhaps she's finding herself flooded with more milk than she needs now and so she decided to dry the does off and rebreed instead. I get the feeling that her kids won't drink the goat milk and maybe she's leaning towards a preference for milking the cows. Maybe finding milking goats doesn't suit her as much. But then you don't know what suits you until you try things.

I was just wondering if this is common. And IS it what meat goat people do? I don't know about them at all but on the big websites I read they seemed to recommend once a year.

I honestly don't know what "good milking lines" means either. And I don't/didn't have the luxury of buying my goats from the best breeder in the country who might be miles (states) away from me. Not everyone can do that. I bought ones that seemed good for a beginner and I'll learn as I go along. I'm not ignorant enough to give up on an entire breed if I find things about these particular goats that don't suit me. As I learn more about bloodlines and conformation and showing and milk records and such I'll upgrade my herd as appropriate. Everyone has to start somewhere and I've started where I needed to for my particular situation.

Deborah Niemann-Boehle January 2, 2017 at 8:06pm

I guess I didn't exactly answer your initial question. The simple answer is -- no, it is not common to breed dairy goats more than once per year, and NDs are dairy goats. I believe that if someone does not want to milk goats, then they should not have dairy goats. If they just want to breed animals, there are so many other animals they could raise.

When most people talk about breeding NDs more than once per year, they are talking about once every 8 months, which some people will do with meat sheep or meat goats when trying to maximize profits. That comes to 3 times in two years. Breeding goats twice per year for two years in a row is sad. They are pregnant for five months, so that's a huge stress on their bodies. Doing this with meat animals stresses them out, and they have shorter lives, but meat producers don't really care because they butcher the females that are not producing enough offspring, which brings in one final bit of profit. In my early days I bought a 3-year-old doe from such a farm because I felt sorry for her, and I learned a lot from her about goat health. She'd had 5 litters at that point, and I was never able to get her health back, even giving her a two year break from kidding.

"From great milking lines" doesn't mean much. Most goats have good milkers back in their pedigree. I always recommend that you buy from people who milk their goats and keep records because you have no idea what to expect from a goat if you don't know what its dam and grand dams produced on both sides of the pedigree. If someone just buys goats from does that were good milkers, those offspring may or may not be as good as their dams, depending upon what their sires' dams were like. Then when you bring in a buck, you don't really know what kind of offspring they're going to produce -- unless you keep the kids and milk them. So, a lot of these "great milking lines" may be 3-4 generations back in the pedigree, which means they represent 1/8 or 1/16 of the goat you actually have. I'm explaining all of this because I've heard too many people say that NDs have unmilkable teats and low production -- because they had a bad experience with poor genetics.

Please note that this is not a critique of the person who sold you your goats. It's simply a discussion of the ideas you presented. Good people make mistakes all the time. I made more than my share when I was new. It's also possible that you misunderstood something about her practices. I've had people misunderstand or make incorrect assumptions about what they've seen on my farm, so it happens.

Kimberly Crawmer January 2, 2017 at 6:54pm

As I said, I'm not doing this or planning to; I agree with most of what was said. I just had never heard of this and was wondering if it's common. I agree that a longer rest is probably in the does' best interests and that it's hard to judge how well they produce if you don't give them time. I was told they are from great milking lines but since I'm new to this I will have to wait and see if that's true. In the breeder's defense she readily admits that she's fairly new to goats and is still learning so maybe it's just something she's figuring out. Or maybe she had a specific reason for breeding multiple times, like getting them on the schedule she wants. I don't know. It looks like she bred only once the first year and then the next two years she bred most but not all of them twice. I don't know what her goal is but I do know she cares about her goats. Maybe she's just figuring things out like we all have to. And yes, she dam raised all her kids as do I.

Really if you think about it a lot (most) of what we do with goats and a lot of other animals is not really natural or in their best interests: bottle raising kids, breeding on our schedule at all, milking them, feeding certain types of feeds or on our own schedules and amounts, etc, etc. Lots of things we do aren't what the goat (or horse, chicken, dog, cat) would choose. Not that it's bad, just that when we practice animal husbandry in any form the animal is no longer being cared for "naturally" or 100% how it might choose to live given a choice. I guess it's up to us all to do our research and decide where the balancing act is between keeping the animal happy and healthy while still being able to afford to keep it in the first place. I'd love to feed my animals organic feed but I can't really afford it so I feed them regular feeds but without certain ingredients that I'm really opposed to, such as soy and GMO's. It's a compromise but it's one I can live with. It's a balancing act, and that's what it always comes down to.

Thanks for the input. The perspective of lots of people is very useful.

Deborah Niemann-Boehle January 2, 2017 at 4:00pm

If you want to milk your goats, then it makes NO sense to breed them more than once a year. It is one of my pet peeves to see people make it sound like a selling point that some NDs can be bred more than once a year. The only reason to do that is if you are basically trying to make money selling kids -- not milking them. So, yes, you are basically running a kid mill. You won't be able to tell buyers what kind of milkers you have. How long can they sustain a lactation? Well, you won't know if you're not continuing to milk them. If a dairy goats can't maintain a lactation for more than a few months, then she should be culled (which could be sold as a pet without papers), not continuing to crank out more and more babies and perpetuating inferior genetics. It's contrary to call them "dairy goats" and then sell the idea that you can use them to make babies all the time instead of milk. Unfortunately since NDs are small, which is a nice attribute for pets, it is sadly inevitable that some people will take advantage of their ability to be bred more than once a year. But people who do that are not actually breeding for anything positive in the way of improving the breed. They're just trying to make money. If you bought your goats from someone like this, you may (or may not) discover that they aren't actually good milk goats. So, if they are not good milkers -- tiny teats, poor udder texture, low production, zero will to milk, etc -- please don't judge the entire breed by them. I personally wound up selling most of the first goats I bought from a pet breeder when I discovered that they weren't good milkers.

Julieanne Cook January 2, 2017 at 9:30am

I think it's best to only breed them once a year. It seems to me that if you do more than that you will miss out on some productive milking months. It could be the ones who breed more than once a year bottle feed their kids. I believe in dam-raised kids so I couldn't do that. If you do choose to breed more than once a year, you'd have to REALLY pay attention to making sure they are very well nourished.

Also, some ND does only come into heat seasonally, like full-sized goats. Mine are like that.

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How often to breed

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