Dis-budding

[wildhorse]

Can I put some triple antibiotic cream on my littledoe that was dis-budded 5 days ago to try to soften the skin and hopefully help with the hair growing back sooner?About how long will it take to heal?

[DoxieMom]

I had my little doe disbudded yesterday... I don't know why you couldn't use antibiotic ointment, but I'm not sure it would help as far as the hair growing back.

[suburbanite]

Has anyone made a concerted effort to breed horns out of a the goat breed? It seems to me that disbudding covers up the problem but a few generations of selective breeding might solve it for good.

[wildhorse]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Has anyone made a concerted effort to breed horns out of a the goat breed? It seems to me that disbudding covers up the problem but a few generations of selective breeding might solve it for good.

Im afraid I dont know.Im all to green as far as goats go I havent had my 2 dairy girls for very long at all.

[mary,tx]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Has anyone made a concerted effort to breed horns out of a the goat breed? It seems to me that disbudding covers up the problem but a few generations of selective breeding might solve it for good.

The reason, I think, that it hasn't been tried is the fear that a polled to polled breeding will produce sterile offspring. I don't know how common that is. Most of my does are polled. It is a dominant gene which they are heterozygous for. Roughly half their offspring are polled, and I try not to keep the horned.

My bucks are horned. But, should I buy a polled buck, that would only increase my odds of polled offspring to 3 in 4, with 1 in 4 chances that the offspring is homozygous for the trait. Then that homozygous goat would have to have quite a few offspring for me to verify.

I'd like to try it, but first I'd have to get a polled buck, and as you can see, it'd take more than a few generations to get to all polled, and that is assuming the notion of sterile offspring would be false.

mary

[DoxieMom]

http://www.goatworld.com/articles/hornless_gwmf.shtml

I just talked to a gentleman who said several of his Nubian does were polled.

[prairiedog]

The buck we bred our doe to was polled we are hoping the trait follows through on the offspring

[HazyDay]

I had my nubian bucklings done when they are only 1 week old. They lost the covering after 4 weeks and I pulled the others off so that it wouldn't get infected. Now they are 2 months old and most of the hair is back just a little not covered but pretty good. (I did take my clipers and trimed most of the hair off the top of their head. Fais Co Farm does it and I seen my first done and their was so much smoke. this time only a little smoke!) So if you don't shave the head then it may grow back sooner. I cliped a doe's tail on christmas and it still hasn't gown back yet!

[suburbanite]

If you don't mind me resorting to punnett-square stuff, recessive genes should breed true, because you can't have a dominant, horned gene hiding behind them.

horned goats:

PP x PP = PP
PP x Pp = PP + Pp
Pp x Pp = PP + 2 Pp + pp (unhorned, despite horned parents)

unhorned goats:

pp x pp = pp

But that assumes that only one gene is responsible for horned vs unhorned.

My guess is that there are several different genes involved in horn growth, and that 'defects' in different genes can result in the 'hornless' phenotype ("phenotype" being what you see looking at the goat, "genotype" being what genes create that phenotype. Just to refresh what you may have slept through in high school bio. )

If several different genes are involved, then that could explain why some (but not all?) hornless goats are sterile--if the gene that is 'defective' has another role in other tissue.

For example, in humans, testosterone governs development of male body parts and type. There are some people born with the male sex chromosomes XY (females are XX), but still turn out 'female' to all but chemical examination. Such people are usually diagnosed only when they turn up at fertility clinics because they have been unable to conceive.

It turns out that these people have a defect in the gene for the testosterone receptor--no matter how much testosterone is in their system, their cells can't "see" it, and so they follow the default value for growth and development, which is female. (Several years ago this proved controversial when a female olympic athlete from Spain tested positive for testosterone 'use'--it turned out she was an undiagnosed person with this disorder. In a way they are "uber-females" in that no amount of testosterone can give them male traits--including muscle mass--so even if she had been taking the steroid to try to get stronger it wouldn't have worked on her.)

Anyway my point in bringing this up is that you can have a defect in a trait (in this case the trait being 'grow male privates' instead of 'grow horns'), that results in sterility because the actual gene involved has a much broader purpose.

If you want to grow non-sterile polled goats, the fastest way to do it would be to find a college or university that has a lab capable of doing DNA analysis. Use conventional breeding methods--but couple them with DNA fingerprints to figure out what 'hornless' gene is the best to use with the minimum negative effects on other elements of goat-ness. Choose your hornless breeding stock with this particular genotype and then you should be able to breed a hornless goat that doesn't have any other health problems.

Some folk put spider silk protein into goat milk in Canada to make spider silk (after processing) for commercial uses. These GMO goats obviously are kept strictly isolated (we've heard that before but lets not go off on it here...). I don't agree with such science, but I'd betcha that the folk who did it have a *ton* of data on goat genetics that would be useful in figuring out which breeding stock to select for a hornless-goat project.

[mary,tx]

Again, polled is a dominant trait. Hence, my polled does are Pp, and half of their offspring (bred to a horned buck) are polled.
This is what you will expect from any breeding of polled to horned, since it is the horned trait which would be pp.
mary

[APPway]

Originally Posted by suburbanite

Has anyone made a concerted effort to breed horns out of a the goat breed? It seems to me that disbudding covers up the problem but a few generations of selective breeding might solve it for good.

There is a greater chance of producing Hermaphrodites in the polled to polled breedings. that is the main reason of people not doing it.
here is a pdf on the subject of polled to polled breeding
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pic...4&blobtype=pdf
It is a old report from the 1940s but worth reading

and from the Merck Veterinary Manual

The genetically homozygous polled doe usually is anatomically an intersex and, therefore, infertile. Aberrations vary from a slightly enlarged clitoris visible only after puberty, to a buck-like conformation with a scrotum, penis (often shortened), and ovo-testes. Some phenotypically male pseudohermaphrodites show male libido with breeding activity. Because these animals are infertile, early recognition and culling is advisable. Some homozygous polled males may be capable of siring kids but are likely to develop sperm granulomas as they mature. Most owners reduce the incidence of homozygous polled animals by never mating 2 polled animals. While most intersex goats are polled, similar anatomic aberrations are seen occasionally in horned goats. These would most probably be chimeras (freemartins), the result of anastomoses developing in utero between males and females. Such chimeras in goats are rare (considering the high frequency of twins) when compared with cattle.

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/in.../bc/180900.htm

[suburbanite]

Thanks Mary and Appway.

[suburbanite]

I wonder what the polled genes really control--horn growth appears to be only one of their functions.

Maybe there is some other gene that is not the one in today's polled animals, that would be a better breeding target than the one that is the most common cause of 'polled' today, and that could safely be bred true.

Steps in horn growth:

general growth genes------->horn-specific genes

polled (today)

1 2 3 P 5 6 7 8 9 10...

maybe better to have a hypothetical trait 'hornless'

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 H...

that involves a gene farther down the line and more specific to the horn-growth process.

(sic: I know bio processes are more netlike than line-like, this is just an abstraction)

add: you could maybe do this as a GMO thing but I think the better approach would be to simply screen a lot of polled goats looking for bloodlines with a non-standard 'polled' gene, then cross-breeding within those bloodlines to see if problems crop up.

[Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians]

Back to the original question No don't use goopy slaves, or sprays like solarcaine etc...putting petrolum based products on skin wounds is the perfect enviornment under it for staph to grow and multiply. You want to keep navel cords, castration bands/wounds and disbudding burns dry and clean. I spary with Fural, it works wonderful is a yellow spray that keeps the wound dry and contains and antiseptic..plus being an aresol it cools the head quickly.

Breeding for polled is like folks who breed for spots. There are soo many other things needed to improve the maternal group of most herds, that only if the buck meets all other criteria....mean, milk, conformation, breed standard, dairy character, gerneral appearance and mammary...then if he happens to have some polled genetics it's gravy. Vicki

[wildhorse]

Thank you Vicki

[mary,tx]

Originally Posted by Vicki McGaugh TX Nubians

Breeding for polled is like folks who breed for spots.

That's fine for you, but if I have a choice between keeping one of my polled kids and keeping a horned one, I'm keeping the polled.
mary