Hello! I'm new here and I've read through a number of posts, I love the atmosphere and information.
I had a Nigerian dwarf when I was a kid but that's my only real goat owning experience. I have recently acquired two, 7 month old Nigerian dwarf goats. They are a brother and sister pair. I'm their third owner, the boy missed his banding window. We picked them up last Sunday and I had him castrated at the vet yesterday (he's doing well). However, they have been housed together their whole lives and I witnessed him mounting her a lot before his castration in the few days we had them. She was never receptive and she would run away then hit him in the side with her horns. I know there's a chance she could be pregnant, I see a lot of mixed information on what to do going forward. Most information says "Don't let them breed that young" yes, well... it wasn't intentional. So, what now? She's pretty petite. I'd say maybe 35 pounds. He's closer to 45. Previous owner said their Mom was a little bigger than the boy at full size.
Additional information: They have free choice orchard grass hay and free choice purina goat minerals, plus they have about 2 acres of pasture to themselves with plenty of browse and grass in it. I know wethers shouldn't have grain, is there anything else I should be supplementing with? Our vet said we live in a low selenium area so he was given a selenium shot when he was in for his castration but the minerals DO contain that as well. They are currently closed in the barn run-in at night with hay, minerals and water. We live in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. What am I missing?
Girl is the all black one, boy is black and white.
Replies
Just to update this in case anyone cares... No babies were made between my goats. He still mounts her periodically, especially when they are a little stressed (I recently added a new wether to the herd and he kept mounting her, she was ticked). And they are not much bigger than they were at 8 months, around 40-45 pounds at over a year old!
Thanks for giving us an update!
~Tammy
I don't breed does until they are 40 pounds, but I do know of does that gave birth when they were only 35 pounds as long as the kid(s) was not too big. Unfortunately, they usually only have a single if they are bred that young, and singles tend to be larger than twins because 100% of the resources are going to them alone. She will probably gain weight between now and the time she kids (if she is pregnant) so hopefully she will be big enough to kid safely.
You could wait a month and have an ultrasound done on her, if you really want to know. If she is pregnant, you can give her a shot of lutalyse to end the pregnancy. It's a prescription drug available from the vet. She needs to be a month pregnant for you to confirm pregnancy with an ultrasound.
At 7 months, the odds of her being pregnant are pretty good. The only time a doe will stand for a buck is when she is in "standing heat," which lasts for a few hours every 21 days. Once she is bred, she would not let him mount her because she is not in standing heat, so she could have already been bred. Or maybe she's never come into heat. The fact that she won't let him mount her only means that she is not in standing heat at that moment.
If she is pregnant and gives birth successfully, the biggest challenge then will be her feeding the kids, depending on how many she has and how much growing she has left to do at that time. I helped someone with a 10-month-old doe that gave birth to a single. The kid did not gain any weight at all for the first two days, so they had to supplement. It was a situation similar to yours. They had bought 4 pet does and went out to the barn one day, and one doe had a baby bouncing around. We can get into more details on that if she turns out to be pregnant. I'm just mentioning this because birth is not the only challenge for a young doe.
Since they have always been housed together, she could theoretically be barely bred to... a couple of months along right? How far into a pregnancy is lutalyse safe? Or is there no limit? I may do an ultrasound in a month to check just to know because I'd like to be prepared.
Yes, you are correct that she could be anywhere from a few days pregnant to a couple of months. Depending on how much your vet charges for an ultrasound, you could do one now and then again in a month. The skill of the person doing it is also important, so you'd want to be sure that your vet has experience with pregnancy-checking goats.
I'm not sure how far into a pregnancy you can use Lutalyse. I don't recall hearing a cut-off date, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.
The vet might give you Lutalyse without an ultrasound to use now. When a LaMancha buck got into my Nigerian dwarf doe pen, the vet gave me a bottle of Lutalyse so I could give an injection to every doe in the pen. My only hesitation with you doing that is that it will cause her to come into heat, and I wouldn't count on your little guy not having any sperm yet. There could still be some viable for a couple of weeks after castration.