we had three babies last evening. 1buck and 2 does. The question i have for someone is when can they be bred they are Nubian. Will it be all right to bred them this august or will we have to wait till august of 2003. thanks for the help gail akins

-- gail akins (gakins@simplynet.net), February 09, 2002

Answers

gail, how about in between?? August would have them kidding at 12 months. I personally prefer to have them kid at 15 months or later.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), February 09, 2002.

Your does should be about 100 # and in good health before breeding them. I personally like to wait to breed them the fall of their yearly year and have them kid as a 2 year old. I know not all goat breeders like to do that, but I am a hobby farm and can wait that extra year. Pamela

-- Pamela (pmsmith@hevanet.com), February 09, 2002.

As mentioned about 80-100 pounds. If you don't nEED the milk then you could afford to wait til 2003. When we were breeding for show we waited til 18 months. And many hobby breeders who don't need the milk don't. In our case we have a dairy, have to breed as soon as possible for the milk we need. This dairy breeding program is really new to us so we hare trying to change what we do. have to in order to make the $.

Hope this helps. I also wonder too about breeding them so early, at 9 months or so as I have experienced this age as not reaching their full growth potential. But some dairy producers have said if you breed early the hormones help with growth.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), February 10, 2002.