Wethering and butchering

[DayBird]

Can we safely wether a 1 year old buck? We'd like to band him. Would he be ok to butcher afterwards? If so, how long to wait until the meat would be best?

[Sweet Goats]

I would not band a 1 year old Buck. I had two that I wanted to wether because I didn't wantt hem to pass on some trates that I didn't like. We had to take them to the vet. It is WAY to stressful on them to band them.
The buck smell I would guess a couple month before the smell is gone. I am sue someone elsse can answer that better.
good Luck

[Tracy in Idaho]

I doubt you could GET a band around a yearling buck's sack.... unless you had one of those tubing banders that adjusts the length -- they use those on full grown bulls, so I don't know why you couldn't on a buck.

Your best bet would probably be to use a burdizzo if you are doing it yourself.

OR have the vet do it.

I agree, probably a month or two before the smell is gone. It would help speed it up if you could wash him off and douse him with a vingear rinse, but that's probably not too likely this time of year

Tracy

[susanne]

wondering who can hold a one year old buck and castrate him?

[Tracy in Idaho]

If you have a couple of grown men to help you it's not that hard to immobilize them.

Heck, we get a hold of them in the show ring so the judges can check testicles and teats! Sometimes it takes a few guys, but it gets done!

Tracy

[DayBird]

Maybe I should have said that he's a small buck. In practicality, I guess he's a Kinder. His mom was Nubian and his dad was pygmy. Nothing about him is registered so he's just a very nice, dark chocolate red colored mutt goat. We got him thinking that "kinder" would be perfect to breed to our Nubian girls...and because "free" was a good price. We have since been given a really nice Boer buck (thanks Hank) and we don't really need two bucks. We were also given two pygmy does (thank you again, Hank) who are really sweet.

We have several dilemas facing us. One is that we don't want to keep the bucks with the does all the time as we eventually do want to milk the Nubians. We have thought about building another goat shed and putting up really sturdy fencing around it and keep both bucks together to provide company to one another and keep them seperate from the girls. We certainly don't need that big Boer to breed the Pygmies. (They are already "heavy with child" from time spent with a Nigerian buck.)

The second dilema is that if we keep the Pygmies, we will eventually want to get a Pygmy buck. Does anyone think that a Pygmy buck and a Boer buck would live peacfully together. We have thought about building yet a third goat shed and fencing around it just for the Pygmies.

Let's see, we're up to having three goat sheds. One for the Nubian does, one for the two big Bucks and a third for a herd of Pygmies. We have lost our minds. We went to bed two weeks ago with just two Nubian does. We woke up the next morning with a neighbor delivering the Kinder buck. We woke up last Sunday with three goats and went to bed that night with six goats. It's amazing how things happen.