August Does and Doelings

This time of year the does are looking their best. They've finally shed out the last of their winter coats and have yet to start growing their coats for this coming winter. They've been living easy, enjoying the warm summer days and getting out to browse a bit. I'm looking forward to breeding season as I'm planning on breeding five does, three are first timers. We've got two yearlings and a dry two year old who we've been putting food (money) into and I'm ready to put them to work for us - start milking and having extra doelings to sell - hopefully.

Avalon- won't be bred till next season

Zinnia on left is one of our yearlings. Her mom is Rose, to her right. I am really looking forward to seeing how her udder looks once she freshens. Rose is our best milker with the highest yield and roundest udder. I'm hoping she passes these traits along to her daughter.

Zinnia again, she is on uneven ground, but I think you can tell that she is a good looking doe.

Zuri on left, Rose on right

Zuri is our other yearling. We lost her mom last summer, who was our best doe. Zuri looks so much like her dam. I have high hopes for her.

Avalon and Asia. I enjoy keeping two doelings at a time. Unfortunately eight does is about as many as we have room for, so if I want to keep doelings next year I'm going to have to sell some milking does. It makes more sense to sell doelings as you can sell them for almost as much as a milker without putting a years worth of hay into her. These are our first two doelings from our buck Xavier, so of course we had to keep them!

Doelings, pros and cons of early breeding

Here are some pictures of our two doelings. These pictures were taken last June. Nia (short for Zinnia) is on the ground and Zuri is on the platform. I am looking forward to kidding season. Unfortunately ours is a long time off, so I've been going back and looking at pictures from last spring. You can view Nia's birth here, and Zuri's birth here.

 

Both photos above and below are of Zuri. When she was born she was bigger than Nia, even though she was a couple weeks younger. Nia and her mother are both smaller and more petite, whereas Maggie was my tallest, longest and strongest doe. However, since losing Maggie, Zuri has slowed down and now Nia is a good bit larger. I shouldn't be surprised, as Nia at eight months old has had several more months of nursing than her counterpart. As orphan of the group, Zuri is our most affectionate doeling yet. She has a special place in my heart. 

I naively envisioned our goat kids romping on green pasture in their early days, even though we've never had pasture to begin with. I thought to make their start in life more pleasant we'd breed to kid in late spring when it is warmer and more pleasant to be outside. Going into our third kidding season my goals have changed and I would prefer to stagger our breeding over the course of a few months, beginning in February and finishing up in April. Well, despite my best intentions all three of our senior does are due to kid in April. Here are the pros and and cons for us when it comes to early vs. late breeding.

Cons of early kidding:

1. It is cold. Need heatlamps. 
2. Kids spend a lot of their time indoors and goat housing is extra crowded.
   

Pros of early kidding: 

1. Early doelings have a better chance of growing large enough that they may possibly (depending on many factors) be able to be bred their first year. 
2. Early boys have a better chance of being able to breed if they are bucklings, or if they are whethered males, might actually be large enough in late fall, early winter to be killed for their meat. Dairy goats are not very meaty, but there is a big difference in a seven vs. eleven month kid.
3. In our case we have more summer facilities than winter. So weaning would be an easier matter in the fall before we need insulated shelters and heated waterers. 
4. February is a rather uneventful month here whereas May is extremely busy. After kids are born, a number of chores follow such as disbudding, tatooing and whethering. It would be nice to have all these initial practices finished by the time we are dealing with chicks and a garden to put in. 

Finally, it would be nice to stagger breeding so that we are never without a fresh milk supply. We have dried off does when they were first bred, and we've done it about half way through their five month gestation period. This year we were hoping to breed five does, but we lost one, and then our yearling has been tricky to catch in heat. So I decided to breed all three senior does, two of whom are in milk. Xoe has slowed down enough that I've stopped milking her as of the last week. Rose, however, is still nursing her daughter Nia. So it seems as though either we get the milk, or Nia gets it. I have been milking just a couple times a week in an attempt to dry her off, but with her daughter nursing as much as she is I don't see her drying off anytime soon. I do have a freezer full of milk and a couple bags of frozen chevre. But I start to panic at the idea of not having fresh milk for the next three months. It would be nice to avoid this issue by either staggering breeding, or not needing to breed everyone yearly. Next year I think we will try milking one doe straight through and not breeding her at all.

 

Meanwhile, I feel good about keeping Zuri and Nia as dry yearlings. There is much controversy in the goat world over this issue. My first hand experience was with four doelings who were about nine to eleven months when I first bred them. I had weighed them and supposedly they had "made weight". Well our two larger framed does had no issues, but our two more petite does both had some stress to their front legs. I ended up wrapping their front legs during their final weeks of gestation as they were hobbling around and their legs were starting to give out under their weight. Kidding resolved the leg issues.

I've also noticed that one of our does who escaped breeding last year has moved from last place in the group to most dominate doe. She is much more robust than the does who have been bred every year. Our first doeling, Yin, remained dry her first year and is now larger than her mother (who she still tries to nurse off of). This being said, it is not always easy to refrain from breeding a doe who you know is in heat. I can be torn between my desire for more milk and kids, and what I know would be the better decision for a doe's health.  From a financial standpoint, waiting until their second year is a long time to feed them and seems forever till we'll get to see them freshen and produce kids and milk. When we have early kids I may try and breed them their first year but it just depends on how they look. For now, as long as we have late kids they will remain dry their first year.

December Does

Nia is in heat and Zuri ( tail tucked on the right) is not.

I took these photos a couple days ago about midday. This is about how light and bright it is getting daily. The sun will not shine on our land for another month. The day light hours are so few that I look forward to day break, I get out, visit and watch the animals. I look out the windows and enjoy seeing the snow, the trees covered in frost and chickadees at the feeders. It is almost like I forget what I am missing until I have it again. By mid February I will be ecstatic about the sun hitting the house and coming in the french doors. The kids and I will take advantage of every ray coming in the windows, migrating as the sun moves through the house, shining on floor, blankets and the couch.
Nia is mounting Zuri while the girls try to enjoy their breakfast. Rose is the white doe. Nia is her daughter. They are both completely obnoxious and vocal when they are in heat. I am not breeding either doeling as they were born late in the season. They are about eight months old and are far to small for breeding. They were born in April and May. Last year we didn't breed our doeling either and now she is almost bigger than anyone, and looks so robust and healthy. Unfortunately she completely hides her heat cycles and I can barely get her to stand still to look under her tail.
This is Xanadu. I am excited about our coming kidding and milking season together. I miss milking Xanadu. I try to give her attention but I deffinitely don't handle her as much as the does I am milking. Last winter we thought she was bred but come time to kid her udder never filled, nor did she kid. Fortunately we didn't really need the extra milk. This year Xan has filled out and is looking good, she moved from bottom of the pack to leader. I bred her in September and was looking forward to some early kids but she came back into heat on Thanksgiving. So we bred her again but now we probably won't have kids until April. I was looking forward to February for once. Early kids would be nice for several reasons. We'll try again next year. Both Rose and Xoe are also bred to kid in April. Yin is the only doe I've yet to breed, and I think she might be going into heat tonight. If Xan has a doeling we will definitely be keeping her!
This is a nice picture of Xan and the doe's covered area. The feeder on the left has since been lowered. You can see their door on the left has a flap in addition to a plywood flap that is latched in the upright position- but I can lower and close it to keep them in if I need to. Last winter we had a wolf scare and for a couple weeks I screwed plywood over the flap every night and then took it off in the morning. On the far right there is a plywood gate into a future pen so we can move does easily. The mineral and baking soda feeder is on the back wall. Notice how much hay covers the ground. Magic was my horse of eleven years and she ate every speck of hay every feeding her entire life. I am so not use to such hay wastage especially at the price we pay for hay, which I cannot bear to go into at the moment (future post). Someday we will build a more efficient covered hay feeder which will help. We use hay for bedding. Straw is a better insulator so makes for a warmer bedding. Straw is almost as expensive as hay so we just use the old hay that they don't eat. I toss the leftovers in their stalls daily and it builds up becoming quite warm and soft by mid winter.