# What do you think?



## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

I think sometimes I just constantly swim in a river of confusion... lol

We had decided who to sell and who to keep, and now my husband wants us to keep our 3mo paint Percentage doeling.

What do you think of her?

First is a picture of her mama and daddy side by side taken about a week ago  nubian/boer doe around 3-4yo, and boer buck 16mo old









Taken last summer









Mama isn't a 'thick' doe, she's somewhat tall/long, but we think she's a really nice doe, she's given us some nice kids.
Our buck has been a huge improvement in our lil herd, sadly it's impossible to get a 'conformation' type photo, he's always 'up my butt' lol

She's the paint doe, and that's her triplet sister behind her









She was a little fussy here, but not much 4th time ever being on a show collar :thumbup: 




































We took her to a youth expo for our county last week, first time away from home, 3rd time on a show collar, and we let a little boy show her, and she did great. Shows' some width on her front end




































I am no good with conformation, not even in horses and I do conformation shots of horses at the big horse sales every fall...lol

With that said, she is NOT clean teated. She has a split and extra teat on each side. If you look at the ABGA teat chart:
http://www.abga.org/teat-structure.php

She is like #12, but her split is a little deeper than in the picture.

However, I am not 'overly' worried about it right now, and would give her more time to grow and see how they develope since she is just getting ready to turn 3mo. Worse comes to worse she could eventually give us market goats...

So...what do you guys think of her? I adore her, but think we might be biting off more than we can chew by keeping her lol


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## Tenacross (May 26, 2011)

Personally, I wouldn't keep a 50% that didn't have perfect teat structure.


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

> Personally, I wouldn't keep a 50% that didn't have perfect teat structure.


 I have to agree.... I am sorry ...  I really like her otherwise ..but teat structure is so important and with that kind of split... it will make it hard for the kids to suckle...... or for you to milk ... she will be squirting milk in 2 directions.... :hug:


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## Jessica84 (Oct 27, 2011)

I dont know what you should do since I do things totally different then what you are into, but I just wanted to share that I have 2 sisters that have the same teats as hers and and never had a issue raising great kids, but I go for meat kids. I do have to admit that the one lost her kids and I wanted to take the col. and it was hard to milk her not only because of the small boer teats but because they were split. But I better never have to do that again since she is not a dairy goat.


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## RPC (Nov 6, 2009)

Sorry but if it were me I would sell her due to her teats. The other thing is almost your whole herd starts with Ithma. You have Ithma, Madison, Lyrica, and Wisteria, I would sell some of the others before I thought about keeping another kid with Ithma's blood lines. That way you can bring in some new lines. I am not by any means saying Ithma is bad. I was like you and wanted to keep a small herd. I never had more then 3 that were related at one time, which was probably to many for how small my herd was.


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## goatgirlzCA (Mar 9, 2011)

I have two does - one is pure boer but not registered and she has split teats and has never had an issue nursing. Her doe she threw this year is huge and has two perfect teats.

I also have a boer/nubian doe that threw triplets - one is a doe - and we are keeping her because the nubian in them makes them bigger framed so I want to breed the little doe to a purebred boer buck when she's old enough to continue sizing them up so to speak. That cross-bred doe also has incorrect teats but threw a doe with perfectly registerable ones. 

We are breeding for show wethers primarily - we don't do breeding shows other than at fair, FYI.


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## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

Thanks so much I appreciate everyones opinions! yeah I definitely have tossed around the teat issue, and Roger is right most of our does are related. 

I have someone possibly interested in her, so I emailed them back and we'll see what happens. I told my husband if she sells, she sells. Of course he wants to keep her, but then he complains about spending so much $$ feeding goats.... :hair: 

I told my husband, we are planning to breed about 5 goats for early 2013 kids. Surely if he wants a keeper, we'll get someone out of that bunch. We do plan to sell Madison next year. She's an okay goat, had nice kids, but we need to thin out the 'relations' a bit. Plus we plan to breed her daughters next year, so this is our way of slowly improving our herd. 
If we had more land, and a bigger barn, I'd consider keeping her. But as it is, we are keeping a couple more than we planned.


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## packhillboers (Feb 2, 2011)

She is a beautiful goat for someone to keep. You could easily find a good home for her and she is already walking on leash.


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## Maggie (Nov 5, 2010)

I was going to say keep her until I got to the bottom about her teats. If you are trying to keep your herd small and improve the herd, keep your very best.


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

:hug: I know it is hard sometimes....and it is devastating for such a beautiful Doe to have bad teats.... :hug:


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## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

Thanks so much everyone I greatly appreciate it  I agree, small herd, teats need to matter. The real shame of it is, her triplet sister is clean teated/has acceptable teats.
I won't knock their mama though, she's been a great doe for us, great mom who was raised as a commercial doe herself, so they weren't even aiming for teat structure, just meat kids.


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## GoatGirlMO (Aug 13, 2010)

I will say that the drought has really affected our goat program in ways we do not like. However, I think that our herd will come "through the fire," so to speak, stronger and better than ever. 

We are doing exactly the opposite of what RPC suggested. We're taking our cue from a lot of the big club lamb breeders and some mentors and it just made sense to us. 

We have two does who are commercial Boer crosses--nothing special, in fact, one was a "sale barn" goat. BUT-- they require no grain, even in this drought, to keep them looking great. One is pretty heavy on the dairy side, so she is flatter-muscled than we would like, but her kids have been a huge improvement on her every single year. She throws perfect teats and lovely udders, and raises triplets every year. The other doe has much better Boer character, twins each year OR kids twice in year (usually with singles, but still gives us two kids/year). Her kids grow fast and strong.

Neither doe has feet issues or has been dewormed in the last year. They throw good teeth and teats. We decided, although they are not perfect, we would like to have a dozen little clones. 

We are keeping the two does and their doe offspring from the past two years--five does total--and the more muscled doe's buck kid. Everything will be bred to the buck, and then we will re-evaluate. At the first sign of issues, we will look again, but I believe breeding goats will be a crapshoot until the genetics get tightened up. Sheep producers run herds of at least 3/4, but often as tight as 15/16 sisters. Half sisters out of half sisters out of half sisters, etc.. With this plan, you oncover those lurking genetics like multiple teats very quickly. Additionally, it is easy to quickly improve your herd with a single buck, and improve the overall consistency of your kid crop. 

Whew. Just rambling thoughts. My main point was going to be, don't be afraid to cut way back and let go of some you'd rather not, because your herd will usually come out for the better. We decided to breed upon a doe base that mae it through th drought with little to no human involvement, because that is what works best for us. I believe we can find bucks to improve our overall mass--the trick is finding one as parasite-resistant and low-maintenance as our does.


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## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

GoatGirlMO said:


> I will say that the drought has really affected our goat program in ways we do not like. However, I think that our herd will come "through the fire," so to speak, stronger and better than ever.
> 
> We are doing exactly the opposite of what RPC suggested. We're taking our cue from a lot of the big club lamb breeders and some mentors and it just made sense to us.
> 
> ...


Great plan! And that's how you will find your good goats. I always wonder, these nice big show animals, if they didn't have all the grain, or all the alfalfa, what would they really look like?

Mimsy, the paint doe above, is on a very low grain diet. In fact, I think her and her siblings get about 2lbs of grain a day between the 3 of them. Of course they are still nursing, but not as much, and not as long as she used to let them. Mimsy is clearly the best looking of the 3 IMO.

I don't have a problem with selling Mimsy, and I know she won't be the last nice goat to come along, I'm still kind of shocked my husband wanted to keep her, he wanted to sell everyone lol


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

:hug:


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## caprine crazy (Jun 12, 2012)

I know most of you are saying don't keep her because she doesn't have good teat structure. If you really want to keep her she may be able to produce some nice market wethers for you. When judging market wethers the judge doesn't look at the teat structure. All that really matters is the amount of meat on the animal. Just a thought...


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

> I know most of you are saying don't keep her because she doesn't have good teat structure. If you really want to keep her she may be able to produce some nice market wethers for you. When judging market wethers the judge doesn't look at the teat structure. All that really matters is the amount of meat on the animal. Just a thought...


 You are right... but the question is ...can this Doe feed her kids when she freshens...with that kind of fish teat...can a kid get their mouth around it to feed? The Doe most likely will may produce good teated kids and flawed teated kids.... but I guess... it is the decision of each breeder to take that risk..... however ....even clean teated goats... can have throw backs.... :wink:


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## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

I will try to get pictures of her teats today or tomorrow. I question the issue of feeding kids too. But she does have another 'clean' teat on each side, then the one with the split on each side. I haven't looked in a while, and since she is young/always changing back there, I'll check again when I take the camera out. 
Still planning to sell her. I told my husband we are already planning to keep 2 does from this year, why keep 3? That would mean 3 'empty' does, in a small herd, on a 'budget,' plus we are hoping to have 5 kidding does next year, and praying that we can get at least one keeper out of that lot. 

I definitely want to work on clean teated does. I really don't want to steer away from that.


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## toth boer goats (Jul 20, 2008)

I hear ya.. :hug:


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## caprine crazy (Jun 12, 2012)

I guess I didn't think about feeding the kids. The other teats on both sides may be nonfunctional. So if the kids can't suckle from the split teats and try to suckle from the nonfunctional teat they wouldn't be getting anything and would always be hungry. They would eventually die from malnutrition unless you bottle feed the kids. We'll be able to tell you if the extra teats are nonfunctional or not when you get her teat pic.


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## Zarafia (Mar 25, 2012)

packhillboers said:


> She is a beautiful goat for someone to keep. You could easily find a good home for her and she is already walking on leash.


I'm with Merry. I really like the looks of her. IMO she's nicer than her sister, but the teat issue is probably a dealbreaker for breeding.
However, she is such a nice looking little doe that she could make someone a wonderful pet, especially somebody who loves that chunky boer look (which I'm really starting to appreciate!  ).


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## Crossroads Boers (Feb 19, 2011)

She's a lovely doe, but I wouldn't chance keeping her if it were me. :sigh:


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## HoosierShadow (Apr 20, 2010)

Well, I didn't get a chance to get pictures, we sold both girls today to a boy who wants them as pets and to possibly breed when they are mature. They are going to a wonderful home, and I think he'll have a really great time with them, they are so sweet and friendly


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## J.O.Y. Farm (Jan 10, 2012)

Glad you found them a great home!!


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