"breeder buck"

As of today I still have no fawns out of my three doe. 1 5yr old and 2 2 yr olds. This is the first spring-summer for the 2yrs to be fawning while the other I bought bred last year and produced two nice big fawns for me. This is the first year to try and breed anything on my place. I used my 2yr old that now is three for the breeding. I guess im just getting perinoyed but is there ever been a sterile buck? Im new at this so dont be too harsh. But if this is the case how would I know. Or could it be just bad luck this year. If i dont get fawns I know of one 3 yr old that might be taking a little one way road trip this fall.

Ok Jared, Now I would start to doubt his abilities. I would think by now in PA you would have gotten some fawns from at least one of them.

If any of your does are tame enough to look under the tails do you see nipples and any signs of a bag?

Jared that stinks....I am down to my last one to fawn.........Just had triplets yesterday and that is pretty late fawns for me......I am sorry to hear about your doe........do they look pregnant.....you should see big bellies on them and even see the fawns moving in them.......

yes I am aware of a sterile buck that was on a friends farm a few years back, does kept coming back into heat and had to switch does to another pen with another buck

I feel I am exactly in your shoes Jared. I used a new buck this year and I still have no fawns. I had him exposed to 6 does and I have not had any fawns, and here we are going into July already. I do have 2 that look possibly pregnent, but the other are not showing enough for me to be sure. I am planning on buying a few fawns because I just dont know about mine having any. I have stared at them so much I cant tell anymore, I have walked the pens everyday since mid May and it is wearing on my mind, makes me frustrated. If I end up with none, thats a big hit financially, as far as future sales ae concerned. I had a guy that wanted to buy all the doe fawns born here, I can imagine that he is going to find someone else by now.I know AI may be scary worrying about them taking to it, but who would have thought a guy would have to worry about live breeding. I need a back up buck for my breeder buck, LOL. Jared if I am still waiting for fawns by August I got a buck you can take with yours on the one way road trip in the fall.

The only other thought me and a friend could come up with is that there is a posiblity of them aborting the fawns when we did tb testing. But only one got real shook up. I can imagine all 3 aborting.

Antlershed , how old was the buck you used for breeding?

He was 1.5 years old last fall.

The picture by my name is a buck that I had in with 3 yearling doe some years back. I had all three of them coming back into heat all winter. They never had any fawns that year when they were 2 and the buck scored 220 4/8" that year @ 3. In October we collected on the buck and he had about a 50 million semen count with 0% motility (zero live swimmers). He was used as a Teaser or Gomer buck that fall and had four females to keep him company in Nov. Between Nov. 10th and Thanksgiving I A.I.'ed all four doe and all but one was removed before putting the semen into them. The one I left with the buck to keep him company came into estrous the first week of March and the Teaser mounted her and thus she went two years in a row without having fawns. All three remaining doe had fawns early that year and DNA showed the fawns WERE out of the semen. The buck at 3 yrs. old had testicals the size of a small yearling and they were non-descending at that. The funny part about this is that this buck had a half and 3/4 sister which were bottle-fed and the same age as him. These two doe between them gave birth to 18 fawns by the time they were 4 years old and more than made up for his sterility. That is two sets of quads and two sets of triplets and two sets of twins . I sold both doe open that fall and they have been 100 % on A.I. Out of the 18 fawns only one fawn failed to be weaned. That fawn was born breech and I pulled it out dead. JOE

Joe C, That was really kinda an interesting post you had there. Funny how he had issues, but his sisters were super producing as it pertains to numbers of fawns. I also find the 100% success rate interesting when you used a teaser buck. I could not go to using a teaser buck here because we just don't have time to do each doe as they come into heat on their own. But the fact you can get such great results kinda supports what I have often wondered about A/I when it doesn't work. I think the failed results are more often a case of the doe just not cycling the way we want using the CIDR's and drugs. Many think it is the tech doing the A/I that either gets good results or that it is the semen that was either bad or good. Of course these factors can and most likely do play a part at times. But I actually have always figured the does just weren't prime for breeding when we were hoping they were. I think this is supported by how some farms say they have does that just always take. I am sure everyone has heard it said..."you could just throw the straw at her and she will take"... That is because she is one of those does that for some reason is always reliable. As with any being that "reacts" to a drug a certain way. I think the does can and do all react differently to the CIDR's and drugs we use during the A/I process.

I am also curious as to what the sexes were on all the fawns those 2 had. I know there was a discussion on another thread about what actually influences the *** of offspring. Some say it is the sire that makes the result of a male or female, some say it is the time of the breeding during the cycle, and some have other theories. I have no idea what is the factor that actually is the influence if there is a factor other than luck. But what I do know is that we have noticed that certain does tend to be predictable in their production. We have one doe that just this year finally had her second doe fawn after 5 years of breeding her. Not that it is a bad thing because she hasn't had a son that was small, but another doe throw in there someplace would have been nice. On the flip side of that we have a doe that has only had a buck twice in her 6 years of breeding. But what is interesting about it is that these 2 adult does have been in the same pens, and have been treated with drugs, and CIDR'S and the timing of their breedings, and everything else exactly the same way. But with totally different offspring results. And they have both taken to a/i AND ALSO missed to a/i on the exact same years.

I would be very curious to see the stats if every farm in the country did all there breeding the exact same way and kept records of many items of interest. I don't know if we would learn what is the "right way" to do things, but it would be interesting to look at the results.

Jared

I know of 3 instances here in Illinois where there has been a problem with bucks that could not produce. So it definetely can happen. One of them had a bout with EHD and surrvived, we think it caused his sterility becuase he was able to produce the year before.

It all goes back to a MN doe called Annie. She did not have a buck fawn her first four years. She had a daughter that is now ten yrs. old that did the same but from age four to ten she has had buck fawns and only one doe fawn. She has a seven year old daughter that I spoke of earlier that I left in with the Teaser buck that did not have a fawn until she was four and then they were both doe fawns. Last year this doe had a buck and a doe and this spring she had two buck fawns. I am getting her back to try to A.I. this fall. No single fawns and only one set of triplets out of these three dam-side generations.

The first two bottle-fed I spoke of yesterday were live bred as yearlings and both produced twin doe fawns. From 2 1/2 years on they have always been livebred. The one doe was a direct Annie daughter and she had two bucks and a doe at three and one buck and three doe at four. Two of these three bucks I have and one has 27 points right now. She is now in Oklahoma after being in Ohio the last three years and has a buck fawn out of Rolex and was bred to Rolex again last fall. Her one daughter in Ohio had twin buck fawns two years running.

A doe that was out of a different line is the most interesting of all. The year I used the Teaser buck I had a yearling doe that was bottle-fed and as large as an average three or four year old doe. I pulled the CIDR on her and those other two bottle-fed does the same time. The first two were A.I.'ed from 57 (Annie doe) and 62 hours. That yearling was not ready and I waited until the next day when I deposited semen in her at 75 hours and she took. I used the same sire on one doe that was with the Teaser buck and her buck fawn DNA'ed to the A.I. sire. Both doe gave birth three days apart and that yearling doe had a big single doe fawn. The next fall I A.I.'ed her and she produced twin doe fawns. The next fall I live-bred her to a buck and she went to Ohio. That next spring she had triplet doe fawns. I did see her 10 months later and all three daughters were HUGE and clones of her. She was live-bred to a different buck that fall and AGAIN produced triplet doe fawns. A third sire was used last fall and she finally had a buck fawn that has two womb sisters. Her first large single doe fawn gave me twin doe fawns and I bottle-fed one, packaged the other to a friend in a deal, and put the mother underground. That bottle-fed doe had twin doe fawns which I am now bottle-feeding one of. Two daughters out of this doe(the A.I. twin ones) had twin buck fawns each this spring on other farms. The package doe grand-daughter had a buck and a doe fawn and a doe that is out of the sire that produced the first set of triplets bred her grand-daughter last fall and you guessed it (twin doe fawns) that I have both on the bottle. I have two buck fawns right now but the count for several does that left my farm and were sold bred or unbred in the last eighteen months is 11 buck fawns and six doe fawns. The sire that produced two sets of twin doe fawns for me out of her grand-daughters is running about a 75/25 buck to doe ratio when he is not being bred to a doe that comes out of this dam-side. I am curious to see what these buck fawns turn into on these other farms in the future. I have had to cull or bottle-feed every other generation. This doe has brothers that were sold as shooters by age three and none scored under 180. Ones under 180 at three were kept until four when they scored 190-205 with a nice even look. I hope you can follow this Roger. JOE

For this reason we at the Hoof and Horns Ranch require a Breeding Soundness Examination (BSE) on all Breeder Bucks before final purchase. We will be doing BSE on our bucks in the pens this year to prevent breeding sterile Bucks.