Another boy

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Dairygoats : One Thread

I've had 8 does freshen and I've got 9 kids. The kid tonight was my 7th buck. There is a bright side to this, I wasn't planning on keeping any kids and all but one was bred to a Boer buck. We should have plenty of meat this year. Five of these does were first freshners so I wasn't suprised when they had single kids, but my oldest doe that had triplets last year even had a big single. My goats are well taken care of but I feel the hay I was feeding during breeding and early pregnacy might have contributed to all the single kids. Tulip had a little trouble , the head come out and both legs were folded back , I went in and straightened one legs and swosh here he come. I was afraid something was wrong because she was in labor for a long while before anything showed. Always exciting but I'm glad to get that kid out of there. His name is Darwin.

-- sherry (chickadee259@yahoo.com), January 24, 2002

Answers

Have you been using boers on your first fresheners for very long? There is a study in Hoards that says it decreases their milk supply (breeding meat bulls to dairy cows) Just curious if you have seen this in your stock? I had nearly all bucks last year and am hoping for doelings, 2 here right now. My best friend called today, she used our buck first and has all bucks (saw some of them Saturday and they are very nice) and 2 doelings, I certainly hope he has all of that out of his system! :) I need a doe year in the worst way! Though I do have some doe kids lined up to purchase in May if I need them, just would prefer for them to be out of my bucks! Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), January 25, 2002.

What's this will all these boys? Please, people, write in and tell us about all the DOE kids you've been having. Give me hope!

-- Lynn (moonspinner@bluefrognet.net), January 25, 2002.

Vicki am I reading right, it decreases the amount of milk given by a dairy breed cow that has a calf by a meat breed bull. Hum? Wonder how that works, correct me if I have misunderstood. I started my herd with 5 little does 3 years ago they were an accidently breeding of ADGA nubian and ADGA saanens, I was just getting started with my goats and told the lady that found them for me that all I was interested in was lots of milk and she said well these girls have lots of milk behind them and the owner had bred for good udders. The first year two of them freshened that come to me bred. The next fall I bred to a 7/8 Boer buck and had some nice kids that brought my girls into milk. Then the next breeding season I bought me a nice saanen buckling and decided to keep his daughters which are some very promising looking young ladies. Since I wanted to raise up those new kids I sold my original girls and kept their daughters and bred them to full blood boer buck so I'd have meat kids and milk goats both. I want my girls to milk to there potential. I am interested in learning more about this.

-- sherry (chickadee259@yahoo.com), January 25, 2002.

Sherry, my friend and I looked into breeding the dairy girls to Boer bucks and we did find out that like the cows bred to beef cows there will be a difference in milk quantity. This will only occure to the does/cows that have the babies left on the moms. The drinking pattern of the offspring is different. The kids/calves crosses drink huge quantities of milk at first and then just about wean themselves at around 3 months. The moms adjusted the milk output for the babies and on the next lactation the doe/cow tries to keep to the previous pattern of lactation even if breed pure.

My friends and I private experiment we bred 3 doelings to meat goats and the rest to dairy goats. The 2 goats left with their meat kids all but dried up after 4 months, even with milking them after weanning! The one that refused her kids and was put right into the milking string milked 9 months. About 10 does that were were bred pure and babies left on for 10 weeks milked about 8-10 months the same as the does that didn't keep the kids on.

This year my friend bred about 9 doelings to the meat buck and she is planning on seperating the kids at birth. She has about 70 goat so she can try different things. She also gets 75.00 for each meat/dairy cross kid and it pays for her shows and fair entries.

-- shari (smillers@snowcrest.net), January 25, 2002.


Well I'll be, I love to learn new things and that makes perfect sense when looked at that way. I'd like to hear more about this because I leave my kids on my does and milk out of a morning after putting kids up at night.

-- sherry (chickadee259@yahoo.com), January 25, 2002.


> Why does it affect the milk?

The chemical stimulus for udder development prior to freshening comes from the placenta and the effect is really important in the first- freshener who is developing an udder for the first time. The placenta has the genetics of the fetus - half from the dam and half from the service sire. This has been researched and known in dairy cattle breeding for many years. Sometime in the '80s David Funk in New York tested it out in his herd. He bred sets of twin and triplet doelings to very dairy bucks and to bucks with low genectic potential for milk production, for their first freshening. His results were published in DGJ and DGG. There were charts showing that the sisters bred to the dairy bucks had higher peak production and sustained a better lactation curve than the does bred to the non-dairy bucks. If I remember correctly, the does bred to non-dairy bucks didn't even average 10-month lactations. He carried the experiment on to the second freshening and found that the effect of the non-dairy buck on the initial udder development carried through to subsequent lactations. Does bred to dairy bucks the first time and non-dairy bucks the second time still had higher peaks and sustained lactation than the does bred to a non- dairy buck the first time and a dairy buck for the second lactation.

MJ

Mary Jo Fines

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There is also another post that explains the same thing again, but I think Mary Jo explains it the best! Only took me and hour to find it on Nubian Talk :) I was going to in the mid 90's use a boer buck on my first fresheners, my Dad the cattleman said that it wasn't a good idea, if I ever expected to put them on the milk string later. There is also a great article on this in Hoards Dairyman mag. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), January 25, 2002.


You sure don't learn this from anything I've ever read on Dairy goats. So this means the high hopes I had for my young girls is messed up before I even start. That placenta thing is fasinating, so much to learn.

-- sherry (chickadee259@yahoo.com), January 25, 2002.

Vicki, Is there anyway to get the information on that persons testing of cross breeding in the 80's? I would love to show it to my friend. Did they leave the kids on the does or remove them? I know it makes a big difference to the milk production. Checked her milk test papers (I test her herd) and the doe that was put on the milk string right away had an average of 2.3 more milk then the two that kept the kids on them, and then after about 125 DIM her production was only about 4.2, that was average to low for her herd. It will be interesting to see how the girls production is this year after freshening to a pure dairy.

-- shari (smillers@snowcrest.net), January 25, 2002.

The info was in Dairy Goat Journal, http://www.dairygoatjournal.com/ perhaps you could purchase the old issue, though I have gotten it for years, can't say as I remember reading it then. This was a topic of discussion on some of the lists, Nubian Talk, WSU list etc. The working premise that the buck you choose to breed your doe to, affects her milking ability for life, was a hard one for me to swallow. Now that I have read up on it, and talked to several folks about it, I do see how this is possible. It certainly does explain the poor milk production on some very nice Nubians in our area! They not only milk much less than their dams and grand dams but they have poor will to milk, and milk for only a few months. They might just as well be 1/2 boer themselves, instead of pure Nubian that was bred boer! Please get back with us if any of you study this further. David Funk is still in the ADGA directory. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), January 25, 2002.

Thanks Vicki, I e-mailed him and I hope that he can provide the information on his study. If I'm able to get ahold of his study I will share it with everyone.

-- shari (smillers@snowcrest.net), January 25, 2002.


Well here is David Funks answer. "Swiss goats were used for the dairy goat. For the meat type goats, nubians were selected for carcass type, ie. more meat type. What I discovered was that the better the production genotype of the buck a doe was bred to in the first few freshenings, the higher her realized production. This is because development of lacteal tissue is stimulated by hormones which are placental in orgin, the higher the inherited potential for production of the kid she is carrying, the more lacteal tissue the doe tends to develope in those early lactations."

David Funk said that all records of his study were destroyed when his house burnt to the ground in 1982. He gave me a few leads to try for his original article so I will follow up on that and let everyone know if I can get a copy of it.

So take heart Sherry, just breed your does to your buck you bought if he is out of good milk lines then you can improve the production on your cross girls. Just don't breed to a Nubian.... I'm joking!!!

-- shari (smillers@snowcrest.net), January 25, 2002.


Okay Ladies,

This thread is causing a somewhat strident discussion in our house tonight. My hubby has a PhD. in Animal Breeding and Genetics. He says we are dealing with "Hoo-ey" and there just as many studies showing it has no effect what you breed them to as there are proving it does matter. As a dairy man's daughter, I am tending to agree with you guys. But guess what I did for the first time this year?? I broke down and I leased a Boer buck to breed my yearling does to intending to let them raise their kids to make my work load easier. I have 17 doelings most of them are twins (obviously a single in there). So I am going to give it a try and see if taking the kids makes a difference. If it makes a difference with udder develpoement--- I am out of luck all the way around!! :-)

-- Tana Mc (mcfarm@totelcsi.net), January 26, 2002.


Tana, tell hubby that I agreed with him initially. I have no PHD in anything but goat manure. I sat up at the University and read Hoards study, I talked to the goat guru's on this, and read everything I could find. It does make sense, certainly enough sense not to breed my girls to meat goats. The study is sort of embarassing, but in the 1980's there simply wasn't boers around for the guy to use, so he picked the unmilkyest animal he could find! Nubians :) It has made me think in the opposite direction.............how about breeding my first fresheners to a Saanen or Alpine buck? Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), January 26, 2002.

Sure, now I find his stuff out. I don't know, I just bred two first fresheneners of Alp/Togg to a young Nubian buck. One of these does has a slightly precocious udder, and the other one, from everything I can tell about conformation, has excellent dairy character. I'll let you know how the milk situation pans out in a bit over a month. This has been a most interesting thread!

-- Doreen (animalwaitress@yahoo.com), January 27, 2002.

Doreen, think we are talking about an auction quality Nubain buck, whom would lessen your swiss breeds does milk production. Bishop comes from very good lines, lots of milk, lots of stars, and E's on appraisal for udder. Doubt when the guy did the test on his swiss girls he ran over to Price Of The Field and bought one of their Nubians to run the test with, bet it was a meat goat herd down the road, who ran spanish does and Nubian bucks. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), January 27, 2002.


I have 4 boer cross does that I will be breeding this fall, if I breed them the first time to my saanaen buck will it increase their future milk production. I don't want to milk them , just want more milk to raise their kids. They are abut 3/4 boer and the rest is saanen/nubian. Just a thought. I've got one doe that freshened for her first time last year, her dam was from a dairy (American nubian) and her sire was like 3/4 boer and that girl had very little milk, she raised one nice kid but never had what you call a udder. She is solid black and looks like a pure bred nubian. Her first breeding was to a full blood boer, quess that could explain why she had no udder. I was telling one of my local goat girlfriend about this study and I thought she was going to get mad at me, I'm always sharing stuff I've read on the computer and I think she believes I'm guliable (not me!).I learned along time ago that some things just don't make sinse, doesn't mean they are not true.

-- sherry (chickadee259@yahoo.com), January 28, 2002.

Hey Vicki, it's hard to get facials across on these things, but I was half joking. Bishop and Peaches' lines have way more stars than my Togg line, and if I remember correctly they don't curve for the breed on that test! I think it will all be just fine;).

This is just really intriguing, and another tremendous reason to not just use any buck you can find if you are backyard dairying. I'm going to tell my folks as they have a good friend in dairy cattle from whom they buy dairy/meat cross cattle.

Also, another question, does the inverse apply when you bredd boer does to dairy bucks? There is a lady I know who has about 50 boer and she would like to improve their milking capacity....?

-- Doreen (animalwaitress@yahoo.com), January 28, 2002.


Hey Doreen we posted at the same time with the same question. I guess we got up thinking about this.

-- sherry (chickadee259@yahoo.com), January 28, 2002.

It would be really intresting for everyone to keep track of what was bred to what this year and then post the milk production over time. Maybe even keep people updated on how the kids of these breeding milk out next year.

* A note on Nubian Milk Production - One of the herds I milk tested last year had better production in quantity and butter fat then any of the other herds I tested. One of her does only milks on one side and she was averaging over 8 lbs. on just that side. Her other ones averaged around 10+ lbs. a day! *

-- shari (smillers@snowcrest.net), January 28, 2002.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ