We are just wrapping up our first attempt at breeding the dairy goats naturally. We are not using AI this season. But I won’t bore you with the specifics of all that. This is a time for stories. Stories that are a daily experience of farming.
Gozer, hollerin' at the ladies
In an effort to synchronize the girls’ heat cycles we put them in a paddock near the bucks. They were about 2 feet apart. The boys inside their fortified pen and the girls inside the electro-netting.
Immediately the two boys started going bonkers. Making strange noises and butting the fence repeatedly. Neither tried to jump out or climb the fence. Just a lot of running straight at the fence, trying to plow it down. They know where the gate is, so they focused on that area the most. It also happens to be the weakest part of the fence, so I had to reinforce it twice within the week.
When we noticed a specific doe in heat we would take the rest of the girls away to the milk barn and leave the girl in heat in the pen. She would be wagging her tail, making a strange sound we’d never heard before and have a noticeably moist tail.
Next I would go into the buck pen and let one loose to run in with the girl, meanwhile holding back the other buck until Sweetbreads locked the gate.
Everything went surprisingly smoothly until the last few “dates”. George, the Alpine, had proven himself to be the casanova of the two. He had style and finesse. Upon entering the girl’s pen, George would immediately mount and seal the deal, usually two or three times in the first few minutes. You knew it was a good one because George would end with a big thrust and then fall over backward on the ground! Talk about hilarious.
Then he would go back to the doe and she would pee on his face. To which he would stare up at the sky and snarl his upper lip. At this point it’s impossible not to laugh. This is what he’s been waiting for all year. A doe to pee on his face.
