As we always do this time of year, we have been preparing our breeding plan so we can strategize what does we want to breed to what buck. While we try to think about a lot of things as we decide what combinations will produce the best result, by the time we've culled all the does we don't want to raise kids from most of our strategies don't get much further than breed, color preferences, and avoiding incest. However, the one factor that we always try to take into account is the size of the buck as opposed to the age of the doe. For example, we never breed our big 300+ lbs bucks to the kids that were just born earlier this year. These big size differences will either hurt the doe or prevent breeding.
For this reason, we often keep a buckling or two from our kid crop just to use on the doelings. This way, the goats will be the same size and, since the bucklings cannot handle as many does as a full grown buck, they only have to cover as relatively small herd.
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