New Doe

We got a new doe a couple of weeks back. She turned one year old beginning of February. She is our first purebred, and the lady we got her from had just moved about 2 hours from her previous home, and the doeling was bred, and aborted. She came into milk since she was far enough along in her pregnancy. We got her because she is purebred, and her owner thought her production would increase to over 4 pounds a day. So far, she is holding steady at right around 2 pounds. It will be enough to get us through the dry period when our other does are in the late stages of pregnancy, dried up and then kidding and feeding their own kids.

I have always heard and read that you should not breed a doeling until she is a certain age and weight. For some reason, 70# always sticks in my head. But in rereading our books, I discovered that I remembered that wrong, and it is 80# and 8 months.

I felt guilty because with our first breeding, I only paid attention to the fact that she was 79 pounds, thinking since she was over 70# that was okay. After we let her get bred, I discovered that she was not old enough. She was 6 months and 9 days old!

We decided to get weights on our youngest does this past week. Our two doelings that turn 1 year old in March, are both bred weigh 113 and 101. They are littermates. The doe that we purchased recently weighs *65 pounds*!

I have never understood why people will wait until their doelings are almost 2 years old to breed, but now I know why. Apparently the stock this girl comes from are very petite.

Our kids are big at birth, ranging from 8.5 pounds to 10 pounds. Twins, not singletons. For example, our herd queen gave birth to two bucklings, 1 weighed 9 pounds, the other weighed 10 pounds. I hear that a normal weight for singletons is 10 pounds, not for twins!

We are not sure though if we are just feeding too much during pregnancy (which can cause kidding problems as the doe is too fat), or that our buck just throws big kids.