Here's the story: I recently bought my first Nigerian Dwarf does. They were both 'guaranteed pregnant'; which, they turned out not to be. The previous owner graciously offered to re-breed them with her buck. It is only after breeding the girls that I realize, upon reading my one doe's registration paper, that the buck I just bred her to is also her sire. !!! If I had known that, I would never have bred her to him. So, how bad is this? My original intention was to start my dairy herd: keep the does from this breeding and sell the males. What are my options now? What is the market for inbred goats? I'm totally freaking out now and I don't know what to do at this point. And should I say something to the "breeder"? Please advise. Thank you!
Hi Nicky, welcome to The Goat Spot. When was the doe bred? Are you sure she is pregnant? What are your views about aborting the pregnancy if this were an option?
Deep breath, it’s ok! It’s not like humans or even pigs where you are pretty much guaranteed to have birth defects or anything like that. So don’t panic. So the down low on line/ inbreeding: all that will happen is the kids will have more of a chance of carrying any good, or bad traits that the father might have. So think of it kinda like this, let’s say he has a super steep rump, those kids will basically be 3/4 him so they will more then likely have that steep rump. But it can be a tool with a totally awesome flawless buck as well. So to answer your questions this is not bad your options are to let the does kid, keep the good doelings and if there are major flaws just go ahead and cull them, keep that money and put to buying another doe to replace it. The market will be fine. I would have no issue with buying a nice animal from someone that has been inbred UNLESS there is a long line of inbreeding in the lines. I would not say anything to the breeder myself, it’s done so nothing that can be done about it.
I echo what AndersonRanch says. Line breeding is done a lot in the animal world. It’s nothing like humans. Father to daughter and mother to son, are acceptable breedings, however brother and sister shouldn’t be bred. We do it all the time with show rabbits to enhance desirable traits. Goats are similar. Keep and enhance the good traits, eliminate the bad traits. You generally don’t line breed several generations without introducing new blood. So long story short....the babies should be fine. Good luck.
Imho, the person who sold you the animals is a dimwit. Line breeding IS done, but it's properly done by knowledgeable breeders who are trying to intensify desirable traits in quality animals, or to force the appearance of recessive traits to test what is in the lines. It shouldn't be done just because you need to get your doe pregnant and her father is handily around. That's a recipe for bad, potentially poor quality animals with potential bad traits that you may or may not want to breed in the future, and it wasn't a nice thing to do to a first-time dairy goat owner. I would be suspicious that the buck or does might already be inbred, too. If I were you, what I would go ahead and do is plug the sire and dam into ADGA's planned pedigree calculator, here: https://adgagenetics.org/PlannedPedigree.aspx If the results came back as any higher than about 20-22%, I personally would use lute to attempt to terminate, and rebreed using AI with an excellent buck. ~20% would be as high as I would feel comfortable going, especially as a new breeder and for foundation stock where you will be wanting to keep offspring and don't have wiggle room for a lot of culls. But any lower than that and I'd roll the dice and hope I got great kids!
Thank you all for your responses!!! I really appreciate all of you advice and opinions on this. I ran the planned pedigree calculator and it determined that this pairing will result in babies 16%inbred. I'm going to allow any resulting pregnancies to continue. But I definitely won't do this again! I'm going to do some homework on surrounding farms and find myself some good (unrelated) bucks. I realize that inbreeding for a certain quality or trait or whatever IS acceptable in breeding goats; it's just not for me. Thank you all again!
We don’t really know the breeders story, she might be a totally knowledgeable breeder and has even done this paring in the past with excellent results, we really don’t know so it’s not really fair to just assume she only had the sire and threw them together for the pure fact she could. BUT I do agree she should have explained things to you, unless when she was selling her as guaranteed bred she disclosed what they were possibly bred to and the OP just didn’t realize it was the sire.........NOT picking on you AT ALL! It’s hard to know everything to look at or into when you are first starting out. I could write you a book on how many things I had to learn the hard way because I just didn’t realize it was something I should know. I think you have a very solid plan. Line breeding really isn’t for me either, not that I totally frown about it but my goats are not perfect. I don’t want to be stuck in a rut of never bettering my herd I want to always improve it.
I would lute her. If her Sire and/or she, has any genetic flaws, they will be passed along. If conformation is not good, that too, will make things much worse in the offspring.
For me personally, at 16% I would let them have the kids. That is not too too high and I personally know some breeders who actually like to be around the 10-15% range for inbreeding. When the doelings are big enough to breed themselves, you can find a nice outcrossed buck locally or do AI for them. And yes I suppose the breeder might have known what she was doing, but I think it was still very poor practice to not communicate and discuss this stuff with a new buyer!
