Don’t let your goats mate at wrong time — R&D proj

Don’t let your goats in heat mate at the wrong time. Also, don’t allow your small ruminants to indulge in inbreeding (incest).

That is, if you want to get the most out of goat-raising.

The greatest danger in allowing goats in estrus (sexual excitability) to mate is having the females give birth during the rainy season.

As stressed by a project titled "Participatory Diagnosis of Gastrointestinal Parasite Control in Goats in the Philippines".

"Kids born at this time have higher mortality rates due to respiratory and digestive problems as well as parasitism. This could lead to losses, as most goat raisers in the countryside have experienced."

The project was implemented by the local government units of Malasiqui (Pangasinan) and Liloan and Danao (Cebu) in partnership with the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD). It was funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).

Normally, a traditionally raised goat mates with any goat any time of the year, noted PCARRD as reported by Ana Marie Alo. This can pose risks, as a male goat can mate with its sister or mother and may cause inbreeding, which leads to genetic defects such as dwarfism.

Free mating may also cause breeding of immature females that could stunt their growth, decrease their vigor, and produce offspring with low birth and weaning capabilities and low weights.

The answer to this is controlled mating, a new technology option that adopts a change in the management system of free range males and females.

"With controlled mating, contact between animals is restricted to allow the farmer to choose the times for mating, as well as decide which male mates with which female," the IFAD/ILRI-supported project stressed.

As PCARRD has documented, mating should ideally take place from April to December to make kidding fall toward the end of the rainy season until summer. Mating should be restricted from January to March, as kidding after five months would fall during the peak rainy months. – Rudy A. Fernandez