Goat birth control?! Let me show you the best invention ever!

Well, maybe not the best invention EVER, but you know, I'm pretty excited about this!

Anyone who knows me know that I try at all times to take care of my animals, (and family), the natural way. I avoid commercial medications and dewormers like the plague, and maintain their good health through a healthy and natural diet and clean living areas, and things like diatomaceous earth for worm treatment/prevention.

What to do with this guy has been a tricky issue for me.

You see, goats were created as herd animals. Anyone who has goats knows you can't keep just one, for their mental health, you need at least two for them to be happy. Otherwise you get all kinds of unwanted behavior, like screaming all day and trying to escape constantly due to being alone.
Well, the herd was designed to have a leader, one to protect them and watch over them. This is the alpha male. Most people you talk to will NOT allow their buck to remain with the does full time. He comes to them for breeding, and then is separated, to his own pen, or perhaps another farm if he has been 'rented'. But this does not allow him to have a natural relationship with the rest of the herd.

Now, before I go on, I'd like to dispel some common myths about bucks.

One of the first things people say when I tell them I keep my buck with my does is, "but if you keep him with them while in milk, the milk will taste 'bucky'!"
Gross right?! Have you smelled a buck in rut?! NO ONE on earth would want milk tasting like that! BARF

Is this true?
Nope. Not at all.
I don't even know where this comes from. Ninja, (the handsome guy in my photos), has always been at least in an adjacent pen, usually in with his ladies, and I have NEVER had a single batch of 'bucky' or otherwise weird or bad-tasting milk. NEVER.
I have discussed this with many goat keepers and they have not either.
95% of the time, bad or 'off' tasting milk is caused by sanitation. Either your equipment isn't all the way clean, or something contaminated it. The other 5% of the time it is caused by either genetics, (you can get goats with weird tasting milk and they can pass it on to their offspring.), OR something they ate. I have to take others' word for this though, I have had my goats browse on everything, and I even feed raw garlic cloves from time to time, and I have never had weird or garlicky milk. But they say it can happen...

Myth number two

But won't he hurt the babies, or hurt the mothers while giving birth?!

No. He absolutely will not.

Now, there are bucks out there who might. In this day and age, people breed for color, production, and conformity. Not many people give a buck the chance to be the herd leader and see how well he does it. So this is a trait that is possibly being bred out of many lines. When you get a bad buck, one who tries to hurt people, or hurt his own family, just has a bad attitude and you can't train him to behave, well, this is not a buck you should be breeding then! Just like with any animal, if you are breeding, and you get a crazy one, one with a bad temperament, you remove this animal from the breeding program! Simple as that.

Perhaps I am lucky. Ninja is a fantastic 'husband' and father.
When the mothers are in labor, he watches over them, concerned, and will protect them, not from us people, but from any perceived threats to the mother. (Mainly barn cats around here.) After the birth, he is patient with the babies. When they are tiny, he won't do anything to them, he lets them walk around in the feed dish under his nose. As they get older, he joins the mother in gently correcting bad behavior, but never hurting them. He's is a pretty fantastic buck!

Now the actual problem with keeping the buck in with the ladies is this: they will absolutely breed back very quickly and become pregnant more frequently than is ideal. It is hard on the females to be pregnant that often, and this also means you can't milk her for as long, because you have to allow her to dry up before giving birth to allow those nutrients to go to the developing baby. Thus far I have dealt with this by allowing him to be with the herd while pregnant and shortly after, but when the girls show signs of going into heat, I separate him to the adjacent pen with his wether buddy, Bobbin.

Now enter this fantastic invention!!

The Bacchus Johnson Guard!
I had heard of this thing before. People were talking about a 'buck apron' for preventing pregnancies. You strap it around the middle of the buck and it is supposed to effectively block the buck from penetrating the female.
Goat birth control!

I was skeptical. There's no way this could work well. But as time went on, more and more people were using them and were giving their feedback about how well it worked for them, so finally, I decided to give it a try!

I strapped it on him. It fits further back than I thought it would, but when looking at pictures online, I see that this is where it belongs.

You want to have it on there tight enough to keep it there, BUT loose enough that if it gets pushed out of place, the weight of the apron will pull it back down.

Then turn him loose and see what happens!

Now, I cannot say that this has worked long term for me, as I just started using it last month, it's been maybe 4 weeks.
(2-3 does have went through heat during this time and from what I can see, all mating attempts were unsuccessful. I watched more mating attempts that I would ever want to watch, but you know, I had to make sure this was working...)
No matter how hard he tries, nothing gets around the apron. Nothing. He is a little frustrated; he can tell he is not getting the job done, now matter how messy his apron gets, but he is a LOT less frustrated than he would be locked up away from his females.

I am confident that this will be an effective way for him to be allowed to stay with his goat family without over breeding, and let me tell you, I am THRILLED about it!

The site I purchased mine from is: http://www.houseofbacchuspetsupplies.com/anti-mating-aprons-s/118.htm

(I am not being reimbursed in any way from House of Bacchus, I just want to share something cool that might be useful to some of you.)

(In case you are curious, I have a Nigerian buck, who is at the larger end of the breed standard, and I bought the medium, which was perfect for him. The large would have drug the ground, I think. )

Hopefully some of you out there will find this useful!
Thanks for reading, and have a blessed day, fellow Steemians!!