At what age can you breed Kinder goats, and can you line breed?.What kind of milk production can you expect also.thanks

-- Pastor Hughes (hbchurch@brightok.net), March 30, 2002

Answers

I am not very familiar with Kinder goats, we breed dairy, specifically Alpines. My guess would be that if they are as big as some of the smaller dairy breeds, Obers, then about 70-100 pounds. Its best to breed in the fall, however, if they are old enough and healthy then breeding at say 6 mponths at the earliest would work. Yes, you can linebreed, however, to do this successfully you must know your bloodlines. One way to know if this is successful or not is to look at their pedigrees and see. many of my Alpines are heavily line bred on certain lines. To determine if linebreeding would be successful look at the triangles in the pedigree. When you ahve them out and look at the generations you can see if it works. Also, I caution about linebreeding if you don't know the lines because some genetic quirks may crop up, like parrot mouth, funny looking faces, etc. Linebreeding basically porvides consistency in the lines, either good or bad, so you have to know the lines. It is desirable to breed the grandfather of the doe to her. Hope this helps.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), March 30, 2002.

I would wait until the fall as Bernice suggested, or until the goat was around 9 mos or older, so she could mature. Kinders are famous for multiple births. The Zederkamm line thinks nothing of throwing 4 or 5 kids at a time! ! In the latest newsletter from the KGBA, a FIRST-TIME doe, had six kids, ( five lived). This was a first for a kinder, first timer mother, though there have been births of six kids to older does.

As to line breeding. Which generation are you breeding? You should take that into consideration as well as the conformation of the buck and doe. If you are working through the generations, I would suggest you try to get a later generation buck.

The KGBA has a web site, and I'm not sure if they put up older newsletters and info or not, but you could contact them to see if there are breeders within a reasonable distance. Really good people in that organization.

-- Judy (JMcFerrin@aol.com), March 30, 2002.

Pastor Hughes, you could probably breed your kindergoat doe at 70 lbs. or so, since kindergoats don't get quite as large as standard goats. I will be breeding a replacement doe that was born three weeks ago late next February or early March. The does I've worked with have had a tendency to be fairly polyseasonal, breeding in what would be the off-season for standard goats (although I admittedly only know one other kindergoat breeder and only have my own experience of 5 years to rely on for information). My doe is currently giving about 6 lbs. per day. She tends to hold the line on milk production fairly consistently, not dropping off like some does do.

-- Sheryl in Me (radams@sacoriver.net), March 31, 2002.

Whether or not you linebreed them depends on exactly what you want from them. Want to freshen the does and eat all the kids? Inbreed as often as you like, but eat them all. Want replacement milkers? Take more care in choosing a god buck. Want top quality stock that is very consistent? Careful educated linebreeding, after lots of research, may be just the ticket. It all depends on your goals.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), April 01, 2002.

From what I have seen, Line breeding is best left to the most experienced breeders Vicki once said that if you have to ask the question, you had probably best not do it and I agree with her.

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), April 01, 2002.

Sorry, that should have been good buck.

-- Rebekah (daniel1@itss.net), April 01, 2002.

Gee Rebekah, here I was wondering if you had turned pagan or something....;>)

-- diane (gardiacaprines@yahoo.com), April 01, 2002.

Thanks all ,when i bought these kinder doe's for the campmeeting grounds I thought i was getting big goats and they were just small.Well they stayed small and I just found out they are kinders and there is 1 kinder billy in all the doe's,and now they are all going to have kids lol so I really do have a small flock.I know i will have line breeding in these.Thanks all.

-- Pastor Hughes (hbchurch@brightok.net), April 01, 2002.