With November upon us, it was time to put our billy goats with their respective nannies for goat breeding time 2018!
With the loss of our buck Rocky earlier this year, Elvis joined the herd, and was ready to go to work! Our plan is to use him for our younger does:
And then put Shakespeare with the older ones:
This year we moved them a little earlier than normal in the month, basically because Marie, one of our does, went into heat, and Elvis was jumping fences to get to her. In fact, he got out at one point and we believe mated with Nellie, another one of our does. So, we decided to just do the move the first week of November.
However, when we put Elvis with his “ladies”, he not only tried mating with Marie but also started being highly over-aggressive with her, lifting her with his horns, and the like. We had never seen this before with one of our bucks, although he had acted this way with Shakespeare (hurt his leg somewhat badly), and eventually we had to tie him up to keep him from chasing her around.
And at this point, we didn’t know what to do with him. Was this going to happen with all of the females when they went into heat? He wouldn’t be of much use then.
Well, we moved Marie over to be with Shakespeare, and there was no problem there. And when we let Elvis off his lead, he stopped being aggressive with the other females. Also, since then, we very thankfully haven’t seen that over-aggression with the others.
In trying to figure out what happened, we were thinking, since Marie had gone over to Shakespeare when we let the females out to graze, and he and she were rubbing on each other through the fence, that perhaps she ended up smelling like Shakespeare, and Elvis was getting his signals crossed with her, smelling her being in heat and Shakespeare at the same time.
And so, it looks like he’s going to continue to work out ok, although we are planning on having his horns removed like we did with Shakespeare, as he uses them all too well as a weapon.
But, without further ado, here is the video of when we put them together this 2018!
We pray the Lord might grant the offspring in Spring, in accordance with His will; we thank Him that Elvis calmed down and will appear to be useful still; we pray for milk later on next year; we pray for continued health and safety for the herd; and we thank Him for the safety and health He has granted them all of these years!
— David
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