I am so happy with my buck and his progeny.
However I am striving to improve my herd with a new buck. I am considering purchasing a sweet little guy with excellent genetics for milk by then end of the month.(thinking I should get two for company and herd improvement) My goal is to keep the herd small but make it better.
My first freshening from my present buck has great udder attachment, unlike her mother, delivered and fed twins easily and is giving me a quart of milk each morning (kids on her during the day). I have hung onto a little blue eyed doe with , now, four teats. I thought she had three initially. She needs to be culled. (sad)
I have successfully sold a mom and daughter, as well as five kids. Sooo my herd is at, three does, one due to kid soon, a doe kid from ff up for sale and one great buck, one unproven buck (7 months old) , genetics not great for milk and a fat yearling wether (for sale or freezer camp).
Oh, what to do, what to do.
Replies
Yes, it makes sense. Sounds like you do get a little attached to them like me, but maybe since you are not happy with that one you should just eat him or wether him now and keep him as a buck companion if your attached that would be one way of doing it too. I'm glad you told me your age cause I feel like most of the other ladies on here are a lot younger. I am 52 myself and if you figure you can handle 10 more years then maybe I can handle another 15 or even 20. You sound inspiring, that is for certain. And you sound like you have a plan. Wish I had a hay field like that. When I decided to get 2 bucks I figured then I could just divide up the does for them and the next go round swap to the opposite buck and compare what they produce. Also I could then breed does from one buck to the opposite buck later. So I figure that would keep me going for a couple of years and by then I would have learned more about what I want and how to get it hopefully. Now, you tell me does that make any sense? All of them should be good quality. They all have good backgrounds. Of course only time will tell just how good they turn out but they all have a lot of potential.
Thanks for a thoughtful answer. We live in rural Maine and my husband will be finishing work off farm in a couple of years..I have already. I want to upgrade my herd so that I have a buck ready in the next year to mix up the genetics a bit. We have our hay essentially free as we have a large hayfield and the guy who does the hay gets half and we get the other half. I also want to keep some homegrown babies. I am not happy with the mom's production of my young buck and should have wethered and moved him on. She has been rebred to my good buck. I have had great success and selling offspring and want to have the best to sell. Does that make any sense? I hoping for ten good years to do this (I'm 69 in June).
If you are happy with your buck and his offspring, why the change with no more does than you have to breed. I mean I understand you want to improve. Is he not improving (sounds like he is) or do you want something else to breed to his offspring that you are retaining or why exactly? And TWO more WEW! that is a lot of bucks for so few does. I have noticed that a lot of people seem to do that. To each his own I guess I just don't want the hassle of fighting and all that or feeding and worrying about a bunch of boys that don't have babies or make milk. I really had only planned to get one buck for all my does, then I fell in love with a little buckling and was going to purchase him, but the breeders did also and decided to retain him. Next thing I know they put his dad up for sale and I was as happy as a rooster in the hen house to get a proven yearling for less money that had produced lots of gorgeous babies already.Yippee for me! So now I have 2 bucks and doe number 12 will be coming from her farm this month (VERY PREGNANT) I wanted to keep my bucks down in number and buy no wethers so I would be more free to keep some of my own that are born here. I would rather have more does. I have a large family and we could use all the milk etc. for something. I just can't see feeding all those bucks and having the confusion that comes with, well if you'll excuse the expression "a bunch of horny fighting bucks" who don't have enough does to breed to keep them happy. Fact is in a natural state 1 buck will breed lots of does and I feel that for them to be happy and not cause trouble they need to have lots of girls each. If you need another buck to use with this bucks offspring then not much you can do about that. But you might not want to get to many.