It’s that time of year. Breeding season is upon us. In our goat herd, we have four Nigerian Dwarf does and one Alpine doe. Two of the Nigerian Dwarfs and the Alpine are currently in milk and not on the docket for breeding this fall. That leaves my two other Nigerian Dwarf girls to be bred for the first time.

Since we live in a colder climate I decided to wait until October to breed the girls. February can be quite brutal here and I did not want to try and keep kids alive in the extreme cold. Goat pregnancies are around 150 days, which should put us delivering in March if they conceive in October.

We have actually, already attempted breeding with our fall girls as of this post. In fact, yesterday we were able to breed the goat who I thought would never come into heat. She showed tons of signs but wasn’t interested. She still ran around a bit yesterday but I do believe our buck was able to get his job done. Both of these does have never been bred before, and our buck is about six months old and a new breeder as well, so I will not be shocked if this first time doesn’t take.

Now, we simply watch and wait. If they go back into heat we will know they weren’t successfully bred and will try again. In the meantime, I am drying off the other two Nigerian Dwarfs and will be keeping the Alpine in milk. As mentioned earlier we live in a very cold climate, and on the prairie, so it gets pretty miserable out here. I decided to dry off the other two does since they give less milk and I would have to keep two of them in milk to produce what the Alpine does alone. We will keep the Alpine in milk throughout the winter since she produces enough for our family and is really quick to milk. When temps are in the negative and the wind is blowing I want to be outside for as little time as possible.

Those are our fall breeding plans. I am not sure yet what we will do for the rest of the upcoming year. If the two bred now kid in March then they should be able to stay in milk until we hit winter next year. I am not sure how long our Alpine will stay in milk, I have read they can stay in milk for years sometimes. However, I think I may breed her sometime in the spring and have her kid next fall so we can milk her through the winter again. As long as that provides our family with enough milk then that might end up being our breeding schedule from here on out. That would actually give each goat a pretty good chunk of time off between kiddings.

I think our biggest challenge is going to be not keeping every baby born here on the farm. My kids get attached to everything!