New Girlfriend for Alpine Buck?

[Lilorp14]

Hi everyone, I'm new to BYH and I'd like to utilize some of your guy's know how . I only have (had) 2 goats, An Alpine buck and doe. They ran together in a 1 acre paddock. My doe died about a month ago of what I speculate was a hemhorrage. Just came out to do the evening milking and she was dead in the grass. Blood had come out of her ears, mouth, nose, and eyes. I've been looking into getting a new doe for my buck but I want to try with a little cross breeding. I've read that the buck you mate the doe with has to be equal in weight to the doe to prevent oversized babies. Is this true?
Thanks,
------s

 

[Latestarter]

Greetings and welcome to BYH from NE TX! So glad you joined us. Sorry you lost your doe. Too bad you weren't able to determine the cause. What you're asking is something you do need to be careful of. The issue is breeding a standard sized (breed) buck to a dwarf/small breed doe. You wouldn't want to breed say a Boer buck to a Nigerian Dwarf doe for instance. Bucks will typically outweigh a doe of the same breed by 25-50% more. That's not the issue as long as they're the same breed. But even then, you should be careful breeding a very large buck to a very small doe, even of the same breed. The problem it may create is a baby that's too large for the doe to pass through the birth canal. Since you have an Alpine, you should be able to breed him to any standard (full) sized doe with no issues.

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