No heat periods

Thanks, Deborah,

When I sent my questions about my two does not coming into heat, i had used forum, so don't know why forum was suggested in your response. But, I'll try again: My two does were born in June of 2018. They have never shown any signs of heat. Neither had their mother, until two months ago. I just took her to a buck for breeding since time was passing for spring /summer kids.

To answer your questions: 1. they have powdered Sweet Licks minerals available, but they prefer to eat fresh minerals from a hand held container twice a day when I feed and water. 2. I have no buck on site; i drive 45 minutes to another ND farm. 3. They eat local brome hay. I keep hay in the manger all the time. Twice a day I feed about a tablespoon of alfalfa pellets, brine pellets and a pinch a grain, to each, as a "left over" treat from when the mom was lactating. Fresh water hauled twice a day. Any helpful ideas? The mom is 7 years old, and produced 1, 3, 4, and 5 kids.

Thank you very much,

Barb Rondine

I'm wondering if they're getting enough minerals. You may not see them eating the minerals when they're available free choice, but they do eat them. If you are only making them available twice a day and they are always going for them, that may mean they need more. Deficiencies in copper and selenium will reduce fertility.

Do you have sulfur or iron in your well water?

Some people have said that when they don't have a buck on their property, they don't notice their does coming into heat, so they get a buck rag. Basically you take some type of rag that you don't care about and you rub it briskly all over a buck to get it as stinky as possible. Then you keep it in a sealed jar so that it doesn't lose its stink. Every day you take it to the does and let them sniff it. If a doe is in heat, she'll start to flag and try to rub on the rag. That odor that we find so offensive is actually very important to does.

About posting -- this is the forum, which is the best place to post questions, because all of the discussion will be here on one page. I can see everything you write, and everything that anyone else writes in response to it, and you can see all of the responses. You had originally asked the question on my page, and I had to respond on your page, so the conversation would have been scattered between our two pages. I tend to re-read questions a lot as I'm writing answers, so it's great when everything is here on one page. But the important thing is you found the forum and posted! Yay!

Replies

Deborah Niemann-Boehle January 22, 2020 at 7:32pm

I'm wondering if they're getting enough minerals. You may not see them eating the minerals when they're available free choice, but they do eat them. If you are only making them available twice a day and they are always going for them, that may mean they need more. Deficiencies in copper and selenium will reduce fertility.

Do you have sulfur or iron in your well water?

Some people have said that when they don't have a buck on their property, they don't notice their does coming into heat, so they get a buck rag. Basically you take some type of rag that you don't care about and you rub it briskly all over a buck to get it as stinky as possible. Then you keep it in a sealed jar so that it doesn't lose its stink. Every day you take it to the does and let them sniff it. If a doe is in heat, she'll start to flag and try to rub on the rag. That odor that we find so offensive is actually very important to does.

About posting -- this is the forum, which is the best place to post questions, because all of the discussion will be here on one page. I can see everything you write, and everything that anyone else writes in response to it, and you can see all of the responses. You had originally asked the question on my page, and I had to respond on your page, so the conversation would have been scattered between our two pages. I tend to re-read questions a lot as I'm writing answers, so it's great when everything is here on one page. But the important thing is you found the forum and posted! Yay!

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