Southern by choice
Herd Master
If your goal is homozygous bucks you would not have to burn. Our polled buck has not needed to be burned and he is almost 6months old with nothing but smooth nubs covered in hair still, shall see if that changes but i dont think it will because i saw his father who is also polled and he looks the same without being burned at a year and a half old.
True, homozygous will produce only polled however most are not homozygous. The heterozygous bred to a horned goat that does produce a polled animal may produce poll scurs. We have made several inquiries in regard to this matter.
A geneticist I spoke with believes that the polls scurs may be sex linked as it seems to occur in males only.
We went on the quest because several of our bucklings that were polled did develop poll scurs. They are basically rounded raised "giraffe" nubs. We had not seen this before, they were also out of different breed lines so not linked to ONE goat. We had a client whose vet insisted she had been lied to and the breeder had botched the disbudding and told the client they were scurs.
YES, I did call the vet.
Anyway there are no real answers according to those I have spoken with but it is best guess.
We do burn to prevent the poll nubs because when they mature they won't have the raised nubs. Many polled goats do end up burned because the breeder is just going across the board doing everyone. That is why on the papers you suddenly see the green coding that they are polled. Obviously it didn't pop out from horned goats, it just was not recorded previously.
Our polled buck (sold and on his new farm) was bred to a horned doe... the horned doe's sire was polled, sister polled as well. This buck bred several does this year and the majority of his kids were polled. I find that interesting.