So I have been having issues with Aliana getting bred. I just dosed them with COWP and I'm pretty sure she is in heat today or coming into a heat. Bethoron, who I am pretty sure is pregnant, is trying to mount her and she is flagging her tail a lot. I checked her with the buck rag this morning and she was lukewarm so I was hoping it was a fluke cause we bred her again 1/5/12 and I was hoping she was pregnant.
She has no discharge but with the tail flagging and Beth trying to mount her (which I have never seen her do before) I am wondering if the breeding didn't take and she is in heat again, even though she didn't seem to go into heat in late Jan.
My question is this, how late can I breed her? I know they have a yr round heat cycle so technically they can be bred at any time. I couldn't take her to today cause my husband has the flu and I can't get her to the breeder now, it is too late in the day. This morning she was iffy but now, I don't know if she is in standing heat or not. I could take her tomorrow but I might miss her cycle. So I am thinking that if I breed her again then it would be March which would put her due, if it takes, in August. Am I better off waiting to breed her again until July or August for a Dec/Jan kidding? I'm just so irritated. She is my milker so I was counting on her being in milk as well as Bethoron. I don't know how Beth is gonna due as a first freshener so I'm nervous at the prospect of no babies to sell and no milk to drink until next year. I got them for milk. It doesn't do me any good to have them and not be able to milk them.
I'm just trying to figure out what to do....I could breed her in March and milk her through the winter as long as she holds up capacity and then dry her off in July or August 2013 to breed again but I don't know how summer births are gonna be. My breeder usually doesn't breed past the first week of January so I don't even know if she would be willing to do it. Help!
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YEP, That I understand. However I am not sure I understand this breeder. I feel so sorry for anyone going through this. I have had an Epiphany: I am thrilled to own bucks! I realize it is not always practical or possible for everyone to but I am soooo thankful that I can and do. In fact it makes me wish I could help out others who can't by helping with their breeding but it can be so dangerous from a bio-security standpoint.
Just thought about this -- if this doe is 150+ days pregnant, you would not get milk when you squeeze her teats. You would get colostrum, which is thick and yellow.
And looking back over your post, this part jumped out at me:
The buck could have been desperate to get out because the doe wasn't interested in him and beat the snot out of him when he made advances, and she looked content because he was finally leaving her alone. Does do not look content after breeding. They seem to have two moods when with bucks -- either rubbing against them and flirting when in heat or beating the snot out of them when not in heat. Although sometimes they beat the snot out of them when they're in heat because they want a different buck! Also, a buck doesn't have enough semen to keep a doe dripping for two days. If she had discharge for two days after leaving the buck, she might have been ovulating then. I don't understand why the breeder didn't either leave her with the buck for the whole time or just watch her for signs of heat and actually hand breed.
If I did not actually SEE a goat get bred with my own eyes and see the doe hunch up her back, I would NEVER say that a goat was bred. Back when we had a copper deficiency problem, I left does with bucks for three months without interruption, and they didn't get pregnant (or maybe didn't stay pregnant).
Although precocious udders in NDs are far less common than in larger breeders, it can happen. I've had one ND get a precocious udder as a two year old when she wasn't pregnant -- she'd freshened as a yearling -- but it isn't something that I've heard other ND breeders talk about. I had plenty of goats in milk, so I didn't try to milk her, but from what I've heard about standard goats with a precocious udder, they don't really produce much.
No as far as I know she wasn't exposed. I dropped her off a day or two before she should have come into heat. She called me and told me that she had put the buck in with her in the breeding pen and left them together for a couple days around when she was supposed to come back into heat. She went out the morning of the 6th and said that the buck was trying to get out of the breeding pen like crazy and she was laying down looking "content". She said she had semen like discharge (not the normal in heat discharge) for the next couple of days and she was fairly certain that it had happened the evening before on the 5th. We let her stay for 7 more days (but not in with the buck as far as I know) to ensure it was not a false heat and she said that Aliana didn't come back into heat at all so she assumed everything was good.
We started breeding her in September or October. Thought she was pregnant from the first breeding but one of my other does rammed her good in the side and then she had some brown discharge for about a week during the first month. I let her come into heat again and we bred her again every subsequent heat cycle. I dried her up in December.
She has a tiny udder right now and last night I put her up on the milk stand to feed her and just for kicks I tried milking her and got some milk out of her. Her udder is not firm but looks a little fuller to me. My other thing is that with Lizzie (Beth's doeling) in with all of them could she be lactating some from contact with Lizzie? If she tried to nurse her (Aliana) after I milked Beth in the hopes of getting milk from someone cause Beth was empty could that be inducing lactation in Aliana if she isn't pregnant? Aliana has had babies before so it wouldn't be unusual for her to let a baby nurse.
Wait a minute here Lori, I just realized something. Do I have this right? Your breeder said that she was bred Jan. 5, but you left her 10 days? When were those 10 days? Where they from the 5 to the 15 and was she exposed during that time also? This doe could only be on like day 149?
Fertility problems are a definite symptom of copper deficiency. They won't get pregnant or won't stay pregnant or won't carry to term. With our history of copper issues in my herd, I give everyone a dose of copper in August before breeding season starts.
If she is pregnant, her vagina should look very puffy at this point. That may be kind of hard to figure out if you haven't seen it before, but I think you have other goats to compare, so that helps. Many goats start to get that puffy look by the time they're 2-3 months pregnant, but not always that early. At the end of pregnancy, however, her vagina should look different than a non-pregnant doe.
I have never heard of a pregnant goat not going into labor, even if the kids are already dead -- and multiple dead kids would be really unusual. If the kids are dead, they would start decomposing, and the doe would become septic, which means you'd know she was sick because she'd stop eating and get a high fever. If you're concerned though, maybe your vet would be willing to talk to you on the phone without a charge?
I just don't know....my breeder said she was bred Jan 5. I left her with her for 10 days to make sure it wasn't a false heat, we switched bucks for the last breeding in case it was something going on on that side of things, and she just turned 7 on April 21st.
I am so tired of this. My husband asked me what I was gonna do if she didn't kid this week and I said "breed her again in August". He wants me to get a vet to come look at her and make sure she doesn't have babies in there and there aren't any problems but I just don't know what to do. I also just don't have extra money laying around for a "what if" vet visit that I'm gonna have to drive an hour and a half for. At this point I guess I will just let it go and breed her again this summer for a winter birth and hope it takes this time. I dosed her with COWP in early February cause they were showing signs of copper deficiency so maybe a second dose the first week of August before I take her to be bred will help improve things. They all look much better since the copper dosing and I am wondering if that was an issue with her.
Yep, I remember that to Jan. And you can bet I keep thinking of you and your goatie every day when I look at poor huge Butter out there with no udder yet and her history of quads. Course since I didn't have her then I don't know how big she was and she may not be as big now. She has only had quads twice and has had triplets and twins etc.
That second photo does not look like she's pregnant. A pregnant belly is up high, but a fat belly hangs down. Is she older? I've had a couple of goats that look like this all the time after they're 4-5 years old, and every visitor to the farm who is new to goats thinks they're pregnant. The lack of an udder would also have me thinking she's not pregnant. I've only ever had one goat not get an udder until she kidded, so that's < 1%. Nothing is impossible, but it's very rare. Your description of her looking fuller sometimes could be an indication that she just ate. When I used to show goats, I'd remove the hay from their pen a couple hours before they were due to go into the ring because that would give time for their bellies to even out and look normal. And 153 days is extremely rare. I've had one doe go to 155, but other than that, I think I've heard of someone with a ND that went to 153 once. About 99.9% of NDs give birth by day 151. Keep us posted!
My goat that freshened with quads did NOT build any kind of an udder until 24 hours before she kidded. I was floored. So my advice is to just hang in there. It will happen!
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