Don't want no piece of that

I had grand dreams of having Pickles and Lily, the beginnings of our Boer goat meat herd, bred in the beginning of June for November babies.  They were both over a year old, good weight & health and it would still be warm enough in the beginning of November to not have to worry about it being too cold for the kiddings.

But Herman wanted nothing to do with the ladies.  I'd been trying to judge the girl's heat cycles as best as I could, either by their tail flagging, yelling, mounting the other goats or goo on the backside, but I haven't seen ANY of those signs yet.  I also figured that Herman would be lip flapping and pissing himself and all that romantic goat stuff when they were in heat.  But I haven't seen any of that either.

I brought Pickles into Herman's pen three times, whenever I thought she might be in heat.  But nothing happened.  Well, something did happen, but not what I had hoped for.  Herman was just aggressive to Pickles, rearing up and doing the "I'm gonna headbutt you!" thing.  No ear nibbling, no sniffing of the backside, no pissing all over himself, no bucky grunting.  At all.  I almost miss Pan.  He was a terrific stud goat (but a complete a*hole otherwise) and I could tell when the gals were in heat just by his behavior.  And once I brought a gal into his pen he took his job seriously.

But Herman.  Oh, Herman.  I mean, by looking at his backside and those obscenely large caprine-baby-makers hanging & swinging around down there, one would think he'd be just raring to go to town with one of the ladies.  Technically, he's more than old enough to be breeding (he's almost sixteen months old) and there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with him.  He gets good hay, plenty of grain, and I'm even nice to him.  Unlike Pan, who constantly pissed himself and stunk like nothing you every experienced, I can scratch him and pet him and he doesn't stink to AllHolyHell.  Occasionally he'll rear up when I come around to feed him grain at night, but I give him a quick crack and he stops.

But now that my optimum window of breeding opportunity has passed, I'm going to have to wait until fall when I have my dairy gals bred.  And hope that he's interested.

Maybe I should start looking for some goat-porn videos or magazines.  Because if he doesn't get the job done, he'll be in the freezer and we'll be snacking on goat jerky come fall.