Someone please help...as I am hoping I am doing the right thing. Piper is my first goat and was supposed to have babies Oct.2nd...she did not look pg so I brought in Beau...the minute he hit the pen she was all over him...he tested the waters (so to speak) and wasn't too interested (that was last night) than this morning around 9 am (they were penned together) the situation was reversed. She had a milky discharge (a lot of it) and he was all over her but she was like "I am so done with him"....
I have this buck for 30 days and tonite I separated them because he was dogging her so much and so aggressive (she bloodied her head a little ..head butting him away)...
I have read that a doe can go into a false heat just by being around a buck and than a week later the real deal arrives.
I did not see them connect up so I am at a loss to know how to proceed. Any suggestions or insites would be great..this is my first goat and she is by herself with me for the last 4 months( a neighbor has a wether that keeps her company thru the fence).
Am I over reacting in separating them...is this buck going to keep after her even she is bred...I read my books and they are kind of vague on this issue.
Thanks Deb
Replies
So Piper does not seem interested in the bag of scent from Beau the Buck, but I will try again around Sept 30th which if she was in heat (and she acted very into her Beau) would be the beginning of her next cycle if she did not get breed....I have been watching her pretty carefully.
Margaret Langley said:
Great, I hope it works out like that, but I did want to remind you, just in case to look for signs of her being in heat in a few weeks. I feel bad that I didn't follow up on watching mine. I figured most of them would be pregnant and if they weren't I would breed them for Spring but turns out to look like they probably aren't. I would have re-bred a couple of them. But it is all good. It just means that I will have more at one time than I expected. Whenever they come I will be thrilled. Meanwhile, we are having a blast watching Penny grow up. I especially love watching her jump on Butter' back and stand. She is so cute standing up on Momma!
I have to tell you I love and appreciate these goat stories...I am optimistic about having some kids in Feb...at least if I count 150 or so days from Sept 11 I will have a pretty good idea of her due date....
Deborah Niemann-Boehle said:
Ha ha Deborah my does did the same thing to Chuckie, that buckling who wouldn't mate them. They stuck their butts in his face for about five minutes, tried so hard to get him interested, and when he wouldn't do it they turned around a simultaneously rammed him. I had to rescue him, too.
Sounds like she probably got bred. Breeding only takes a second or two with goats -- no kidding!!! Someone kept complaining last year that her does weren't getting bred and then she got surprised by them kidding this spring. Well, as it turns out she'd left them with the buck and gone in the house for 15 minutes. I never thought to ask if she'd left them alone! When she said they weren't getting bred, I assumed she had been watching the whole time they were together.
I don't leave a doe with a buck until I've seen one good breeding just so that I know she was definitely bred. If it happened once, it'll happen again, so then I usually leave them together for a few hours.
And some goats get very violent around breeding time for a variety of reasons. That's another reason I stick around for a few minutes when I first put them together. Last year, we tried to get a young buck to breed a 8 year old doe, and she stood perfectly still and gave him about three minutes to figure it out, and then she beat the snot out of him, so we took him out of there. We brought in an experienced buck, and he bred her right away. The oddest thing I ever saw was a la mancha doe started biting a ND buck when he couldn't figure out how to mate her (because she was quite a bit taller than him).
Oh gosh I hope I didn't mess things up by separating them that second nite...she seemed over him not like she was the first day and nite and next morning...it was the second nite I separated them and than by that afternoon he no longer was interested in her at all....argh this is all so confusing...He did actually break her toenail. Other than that she is fine and Beau has gone home. I rubbed a rag all over his stinky self put it in a zip lock baggie and thought I would bring it out in about 19 to 20 days and see if it excites her at all. Thanks Margaret for the feed back.
Welcome to the world of goat romance. New to it myself, I can tell you that I am beginning to think that it is about as confusing sometimes as human romance!
My main concern with separating them, if it were me is that I would be afraid that I could miss the right time! I can understand your concern but I would think that most likely she can probably take care of herself. I don't really know if she would be likely to actually become seriously injured. I have never heard of that happening although I am sure it has at least occasionally, even if rarely.
I would think the highest risk of that would be if they got to serious about their fighting and then it turned out she really is already pregnant. Now that would be a little riskier if she took hard belly blows. But I doubt it would be to risky as long as she really isn't bred already. If any one does know of this being dangerous I am sure they will let us know. I know I want to be aware of the possibility of that risk.