Meat Goat Blog

Breeding Safely: Linebreeding WITHOUT Inbreeding

For a long time, businesses that cross animals that are closely related to each other have existed with marked disapproval from society. For this reason, many ranchers are afraid to breed any animals that were even born on the same farm. But that really doesn't make any sense. The way breeds and lines of livestock are formed is by one ranch dedicating itself to producing quality animals with certain characteristics. When they reach uniformity in their herd, through linebreeding, they title their livestock as a line or breed. Often the way they get uniformity within the breed or line is by breeding animals that have strictly been raised on their ranch so they are certain that the genetics will be sound. Then they will occasionaly outcross their bucks every few generations to stir the genetic pool a little. So how is creating a line or breed of livestock any different than inbreeding? The lines get kinda fuzzy here.

To many people, inbreeding would be classified as breeding any animals that have ever shared common ancestors. I'm sorry, but with that criteria, you just can't breed animals. Every animal in every species will have some ancestor from 4000 years ago that was also related to the one you want to breed. A more reasonable and widely accepted view is that, as long as you don't breed close relatives (like parents, cousins, uncles, etc.) then your probably doing alright. According to Sue Ann Bowling, "inbreeding at its most restrictive applies to what would be considered unquestioned incest in human beings - parent to offspring or a mating between full siblings. Uncle-niece, aunt-nephew, half sibling matings, and first cousin matings are called inbreeding by some people and linebreeding by others."

For more in-depth information from Sue Ann's website, click this link to her very informative article about inbreeding and linebreeding in dogs. While it's not the same species as goats, there is a lot of good information to read and think about.

Like Mother Like Son

For many years in a row, we have been amazed how this doe's kids always share her unique coloration patterns.

Goat Prices Continue to Climb

Goat prices like gasoline continue to go higher. The last couple of years have seen increased pressure in the prices. We attribute it to two reasons. First, a lot of breeding stock was sold for slaughter the past couple of years. Prices were up and forage was scarce. Texas was hit with the drought and Oklahoma has been pretty dry as well. Guess what high prices and a shortage of feed cause. Yep, goat ranchers sell breeding stock.

The second reason is inflation creeping into the mix. Fuel keeps going up. Wormers and other goat supplements such as minerals costsmore. As your costs increase, the prudent businessman raises prices to cover the additional expense.

We don't see any decrease in prices the next year or so. The market seems to have a shortage and demand hasn't dropped. Nice to be in the business with the market up and looking like it will go higher.

Training Your LGD: Whether You Mean to or Not

A couple months ago, we started a Livestock Guardian Dog (LGD) pup to begin running with our grown dogs. We were surprised by how focused he was on staying with the goats at such a young age. But we were even more impressed because he didn't try to play with the babies that had been born just before we got him. As time wore on, we became more and more impressed by his ability to learn by example. Unfortunately, that ability to learn had another side to it. We had made to mistake of waiting a couple weeks before tagging the newborn kids. This is a BAD idea! To catch them, we had to chase them all over the pasture. But what we weren't thinking of as we did this, was our fluffy little audience.

Because we were not careful to avoid teaching the pup bad habits, we now have to re-train him to NEVER chase the goats. So remember when you have a LGD in training, they learn very fast but do not forget quite so quickly!

Be sure to check out our directory of Livestock Guardian Dogs for sale.

Big Hole Panels Cost You Goats

This morning was a good reminder that big hole panels cause loss of livestock. We used the big hole panels when we built our buck pen. It covers about 7 acres and we have not wanted to spend the money to redo it. Since we run principally bucks in the pen, we don't have much trouble. The bucks tend to have bigger horns and can't put their heads through the holes.

One of our yearling bucks reminded me about earlier losses. He decided to stick his head thru and got stuck. Good news for us, one of our LGD's decided to stay with him. I heard a dog howling and figured it was a neighbor dog. Our LGD's don't howl much. But I kept hearing a goat from the same direction and decided to investigate to be safe. Sure enough, one of our most promising yearlings was waiting for the coyotes to come for breakfast.

I like the LGD's. They really watch out for the goats and this one  was ecstatic when the goat was released. He was clearly unhappy with the goat caught in the fence and apparently howling to tell us about the situation. Moral of the story, don't use the big hole fencing unless you regularly check it to avoid losses.

Spanish Goats: The Positive Alternative to Boers

Like many beginning goat ranchers, we started in the business with some Boer goats that someone was selling in a herd dispersal. We were very exicited by the size and build of these goats and expected to make gobs of money in no time. Then, by first hand experience, we began to learn that there is much more to goats that just size and appearance.

First our goats began to fall over dead, for no aparent reason. After very little research, we figured out that they were wormy. Eventhough we wanted healthy animals that needed minimal maintenance, worming goats a couple times a year didn't seem like that big a deal. WRONG!!! Just to keep them from being REALLY run down, we had to worm at least once a month.

Then we saw their mothering abilities. We had to pull more kids than we could count! But once we got them out, they would just walk off and leave them. Kidding season is supposed to end with you owning more goats than when it began. Not with Boers. We were extremely lucky if the few singles they did raise made up for the number of does and kids that died at birth.

After a couple years of this, we decided it was time to get new goats. We played around with lots of breeds until we settled on Spanish. The Spanish goats were hardy, healthy, and raised twins without help. The only issue we had was getting the kids tagged before they were too fast to catch. Over the next few years we sold off the Boers. To this day we are thrilled to have made the change! Spanish goats are truly the positive alternative to Boers.