Thursday, March 20, 2014

You paid for that? With, like, money?

"Didn't you just GIVE away two goats and now you just BOUGHT one?!"

Those were some of Paul's first comments after laying eyes on this little bugger:
Would you look at that little tail wagging like it's gonn'a fly right off!
I think subsequent comments were, "Don't we have enough freaking goats", followed by a "You're not allowed to go on the goat FB pages anymore" and finished with the usual "I only agreed to chickens".

But we do need another Boer buck to replace Herman.  And since I wanted to make sure we only brought in hornless goats, I had to get a very young one.  This guy is only two weeks old.  Tomorrow he's going under the disubdding iron.

As you have probably noticed, I have myself a bottle buckling.  I h.a.t.e. bottle raising kids.  But since he is going to stay a he (and not be wethered), I need him to be friendly.  Like really friendly.  And I'm hoping that the fact that he's being bottle raised will help that.  Herman is an asshat....with horns.  Not as bad as Pan was, but at least he was hornless and I could manage to wrestle him down to the ground if I had to.  There's no way I'd be able to get Herman down on the ground without some serious hurting.

I'm still doing my figuring on who's breeding whom this fall.  We committed livestock husbandry blasphemy last fall when I had Herman breed his sister Lily.  She kidded with a buckling & doeling easily, but the buckling was smaller and died of hypothermia several days later.  I place the fact he even got hypothermic squarely on my shoulders, but I wonder if the breeding brother to sister had anything to do with the smaller size of the buckling.  Not sure if we'll ever know.

Technically Herman could breed everyone this fall with the exception of Lily's doeling, Clover.  I don't want to chance fate with him breeding her since he's Clover's father and her uncle.  Talk about hillbilly inbreeding....

So the new buckling could be used on Lily and Clover and there wouldn't be any of that funky inbreeding (or as it's called when you don't want to sound like a hillbilly; Line-Breeding).

Pickles (if I keep her sorry ass) and her doeling Dilly and Penny and her doeling Lira would be bred to Herman as long as I'm happy with how the kids fatten up by fall.  If they aren't looking how I'd like them to, Herman is out and the new kid on the block will have the entire Krazo Acres Boer harem to himself.

7 comments:

  1. I don't know about brother and sister but a lot of people do line breeding, at least in cattle, where they breed the father to the daughter once. I have read that's how they have gotten several breeds started when going after a certain trait or groups of traits so it isn't that uncommon. As I said in cattle not sure about goats though.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I always heard if it worked out it was called line breeding and if it didn't...inbreeding.
    Breeders will breed a grandfather to a granddaughter and have no problems.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I breed and sell dogs(Cavalier King Charles Spaniels) and line breeding is a good thing in any critter when done responsibly. Brother and sister is a bit to close for my liking but Dad/ daughter, Uncle/neice, Aunt/Nephew Grandparents/grandkids can all be very beneficial to a breeding program...You get all the best traits, but you can also get the worst traits so always make sure you breed 'up' meaning you have lots of good qualites that outweight the bad. The reason brother sister is bad is due to the genes, both have genes from both parents therefore it is a narrow gene pool and can cause a myriad of issues when you breed them back to one another, the gene pool will be a shallow on one end...LOL...breeding dad to daughter you have a wider gene pool and so on and so forth...the more distantly related the wider the gene pool.

    ReplyDelete
  4. He sure is a cute little guy. I hope he turns out to be sweet natured, but it's always a crap shoot with goats. How's your little gimpy guy? Standing on his own?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Carolyn,

    Let Paul read this post and he will change his mind about having the new little one on the farm. He's a cutie, and it looks like Rhiannon is enjoying herself feeding him.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I have a feeling Paul secretly loves everything about you. (But he'll never be bored, will he?)

    We always had good luck with our buck goats by handling and giving them lots of lovin' when they were small and manageable. Never had a mean one. We led them around on a leash a lot from the time they were small so they were used to it and then easy to move from spot to spot when "all growed up." Who wouldn't love and play with that adorable little guy? Did you mention a name for him? Got one yet?

    ReplyDelete