Hi all, I got some interesting information from the vet today that I thought I'd share. A bit of background first.
I brought my 16 month old doe Juniper in because she was bred back in January with what looked like a very textbook breeding. About 20 days later she came into heat, so I figured she didn't take and decided I'd try again on the next heat. Well, she never came into heat so I thought maybe she just had a delayed implantation and her hormones hadn't caught up enough to prevent cycling again. Apparently that can happen. I proceeded as if she was pregnant with a due date of June 10. Well, she never bagged up and the 10th came and went with no kids. There was no sign of a false pregnancy, so I was left wondering why she, 1) didn't get pregnant, and 2) didn't go back into heat. Hence the vet visit.
First of all, the vet said she was VERY healthy, which was a relief. I'd been beating myself up thinking I'd been doing something wrong with her nutrition or minerals, etc. Her parasite load was almost non-existant. He though that a couple of things might be going on. The less likely explanation was that she had an unresolved Corpus Luteum. He said they are pretty rare in does that have never kidded, but it was possible. The more likely explanation according to him was that she is one of a not-too-rare strain of NG's who are seasonal breeders like the full size dairy goats. He said for some reason you see that more here in the South. Maybe it's the lines that are around here or something. I'd never read this anywhere in my research so I wanted to come share it here.
The treatment we decided on was to give her a Lutalyse shot today to see if that would resolve the possible CL and start her cycling again. But he said if she doesn't, not to worry about it till September. If she still isn't cycling then I'm to bring her back in and he'll ultrasound her. I'm fine with this because even if she starts a heat cycle tomorrow, I'm not going to breed her again until the fall. The other thing he said was that while she's in great body condition and has good confirmation, in his opinion she seemed "young" for her age and that she might just not have been mature enough at 11 months to hold a pregnancy. He said if she had held the pregnancy then kidding might have been difficult, so it may have been a blessing in disguise that she didn't take.
I feel good about the information he gave me because he's a goat man himself, he's raised Boer goats for the past 20 years. If anyone is interested, I'll keep you posted with Juniper's progress. I tell ya, always learning something new!
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Several of the breeders in my area say that their does will go into heat year round but that no matter how many times they are with the buck they won't settle until fall. It makes sense that they would be seasonal breeders because carrying kids through the summer would not be easy on them, especially in the South.
It's kind of annoying that it's commonly believed that NDs can be bred year-round because that's not been my experience. I have had a few does kid in fall, but my success in breeding does for fall kidding has been pretty small. A few years ago I had the not-so-brilliant idea to have five does kid in fall to spread out milking. I left them in a pen with a buck for the month of April, and not a single one got pregnant. That was really disappointing!
It's great that you have a vet near you who actually has real life goat experience! That's rare!