I hope someone can help me. I purchased my buckling last year & he was such a sweet boy. But.. now he won't stop hitting everything with his head! He doesn't hit me or anything. But when I go to pet his neck (I WAS avioding petting his head cause of this), he will try to rub his scurs on my arm like I'm a tree. He is starting to ruin everything with his head. He batters the hay bag constantly & rips one after the other. Could his scurs be bothering him? Could it be before I purchased him they were letting him butt their hands for fun? How do I correct this & can it even be corrected? He's still in rutt too, yelling at all hours of the day. He's seriously getting on my last nerve. :/ I'm so jealous when people say how good their bucks are. I mean, he's not mean.. just a giant pain!
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Thanks everyone. I just walked out to my buck trying to breed my wether. :/ Guess I'll be looking for a buck asap. Shame my nicer doe isn't kidding soon.. I'd keep one of her bucks for a companion so I didn't have to fork out money. Oy!
I've decided that my wether makes my buck sexually frustrated. They are both approaching a year old and they hate each other (completely ignore each other and stay on opposite sides of the pen, except when the buck is trying to breed the wether). I'm going to start looking for another buck soon because the wether gets SO happy when I let him play with his sisters, and when I put him back with the buck he gets all droopy. I definitely agree with Rachel that they can sense the hormonal difference.
My bucks always stink, but more so during rut. Otherwise, they seem to limit their bucky behavior to when there is a doe in heat. (when they're not in rut) It *might* be that your wether is causing your buck to act up because he wants to breed him? I don't know for sure, but from my recent experience with the wether in my buck's pen, I can see how that might stir up some unwanted behavior. It makes sense to me that the wether could be causing your buck to feel like he needs to behave more bucky and be more aggressive than he would be if he were housed with a like hormoned goat instead.
Thanks girls. I was going to replace my wether (he's not friendly) with another wether. Maybe I'll just try a buck instead when I find a nice one around here. Is it okay for him to still be in rut? I mean, I don't think there's much I can do about it but everyone elses bucks seem to be stink free & out of it right now.
It doesn't help if he's in rut. Thankfully, buckish behavior lessens when they aren't in rut, but there is definitely a season for it. I personally keep two bucks instead of a wether with a buck, and I think it helps with the buck behavior a bit. I just shared in another post about how my newest buckling got into the pen with the big bucks, and they are VERY docile with him. They were horribly aggressive with a wether that got into their pen when I was changing up my pen system, and so I had been working on a slow introduction with the new baby buckling. Turns out, they seemed to be able to sense the hormonal difference with the wether vs the buckling. Their attitudes have been MUCH different between the two, and the buckling is smaller than the wether. Something to think about. It might be better/easier for you to have two bucks as opposed to a wether in with your buck.
I'd suggest getting a dam-raised buck next time, which means he was raised by his mother exclusively. When bucks are bottle-fed, they have an identity crisis and don't know how to relate to humans. Temple Grandin says that males that are bottle-fed should be castrated. Of course, she has done a lot of work with cattle, and the majority of bulls that kill people were bottle-fed as babies. Bottle-fed male llamas are so bad that there is a name for it -- aberrant behavior syndrome, and it used to be called berserk male syndrome.
My last bottle-fed buck is 10 years old now, and he still loves to rub his head on people's legs. He's not mean. It's just what he does. It's marking behavior -- kind of like a dog peeing on things.
He was on his dam, then he was getting a bottle when I got him & I had to wean him off of it. Le sigh. Thanks everyone. I'm soon moving to a property that is close to neighbors, I don't think he's going to work out too well. He's the loudest & most high pitched out of 5 of my goats.
If he was bottle-fed, that's the problem. I really don't like bottle-fed bucks. I used to have one who truly thought I was his girlfriend.
Oh gosh. He has a wether in the pen with him & they do play all day. He's also harrassing the poor wether cause he wants to mate with something. I really want to add another buck to my herd but his behavior is just turning me off from doing so.
Sounds like typical bottle-fed buck behavior. They don't know they're a goat. The other possible problem would be that they played with him roughly when he was younger. Someone else on here had a goat start butting her when he was a couple years old. Her husband had been butting head with him when he was smaller. It's not so cute when they get bigger, but they don't understand that they're not supposed to do that any longer.
Does he have another buck to play with?