# Help introducing goats



## Rhondax6 (Jul 25, 2009)

We have a four month old wethered pygmy mix and just got a wethered nigerian dwarf recently weaned.  Our pygmy has horns, the nigerian does not.  Our pygmy is not a very gracious host and is jabbing the little one in an aggressive way, almost all the time.  Any tips on  improving the situation?  They are in seperate areas for now but would make life much easier if they were in the same enclosure.


Thank you for any help anyone can offer!

Rhonda


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## lilhill (Jul 26, 2009)

If they were here, I'd have the horns removed, either by Vet or banding them myself.  Having a horned goat in a tussle with a disbudded one is like getting into a fight with one having a baseball bat and the other defending himself with a straw.  Not a good thing IMO.


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## Chaty (Jul 26, 2009)

Yep its time to get rid of those horns as they are dangerous and can really hurt the new little guy.


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## Rhondax6 (Jul 26, 2009)

Thanks for the advice.  I'm going to call the vet on Monday but for now he'll have balls on his horns.  Can you tell me what the surgery to remove the horns might be like?  And it's not too late to remove his horns it is? They're about 3 inches long.

Rhonda


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## Chaty (Jul 26, 2009)

I personally would band them and it takes a few weeks for them to come off. Most vets will want to knock the goat out and thats not good. If they are that long I would use the elasticator banding gun and band them myself. Lots cheaper and it works really well. Some think its cruel but in the long run its really not.
No hes not to old as they do adults alot but I dont really like to do it to older goats and banding to me works better.


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## lilhill (Jul 26, 2009)

I would also try the banding first.  Much safer than having the Vet remove them as the Vet can't guarantee the anesthesia won't kill your wether.  Goats sometimes don't do well when put to sleep.


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## cmjust0 (Jul 27, 2009)

We introduced a disbudded Nubian buckling into a pen with two older boer-cross bucklings with small horns..  The batted him around for a little while, but he shares a pen with one of them to this day.  The horned one has a set that's probably approaching 6" long at this point, and he's bigger than the nubian..  

The nubian seems to like the other one's horns, actually...good for scratching those hard to reach places on top of his head and the back of his neck.  It's really quite funny to watch him walk over to the other buck and start scratching his head furiously on the other one's horns..  

Needless to say, they get along famously these days.

Personally...with them both being that young...I say spare the horned goat the misery of removing the horns and let'em sort it out.  

That's just MHO.


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## lilhill (Jul 27, 2009)

When they get older and the one with horns realizes he has the advantage is when the problems arise.  Ask me how I know.


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## cmjust0 (Jul 27, 2009)

Ok...I'll bite.

How do you know?


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## Rhondax6 (Jul 27, 2009)

I'd also like to know.  He has the balls glued on now, will those help when he realises he has sharp stabby things on his head?


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## cmjust0 (Jul 27, 2009)

The thing is, they'd be doing this even without the horns..  It's not the horns, nor the realization that one has horns and the other one doesn't, that's causing this to happen...  Your older wether is just being a goat.

Our "primary herd," I guess you'd call it, are all disbudded and they rear up and butt heads just like horned goats do.  They bite each other, too...hard...pull each others' hair out, etc..  

Then they're apt to lay down all together for a nap, heads stretched over each other in one big massive wad of goat..

The worst is when kids are just starting to run around and be curious because everybody but their mamas try to stamp them into the ground or crush them into the barn walls..  I've seen big adult does push 2-week old babies into walls so hard the baby just goes "BAHhh" and trails off as the wind is forced out of their body..  Then they start squirming, silently, to get away so they can BREATHE..  It's pretty horrific, but again...normal goat behavior.

The key is that the babies learn quickly to get the heck out of the way when a big adult comes rushing over..  I think that's why they can run so fast..    Eventually, the adults get tired of chasing them down and poof...all the pecking is worked out, the honcho is established, and everything is (for the most part) just fine.

That said, the key here may lie in making sure the enclosure is big enough for the little one to stay clear until the wether decides he's firmly established his dominance.

If he can't get far enough away, though, the wether may interpret that as the little guy being brave or stupid or challenging him in some way...or something...who knows what goes through the teeny tiny brain of a goat, ya know?


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## mully (Jul 27, 2009)

cmjust0 said:
			
		

> .who knows what goes through the teeny tiny brain of a goat, ya know?


Food what else... is there anything else for a goat.


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## lilhill (Jul 27, 2009)

cmjust0 said:
			
		

> Ok...I'll bite.
> 
> How do you know?


A few years ago, my primary breeding buck had very impressive horns.  Then I introduced another buck to him that was disbudded.  They did the customary butting to get dominance established and I figured I'd let the second buck realize he was at a disadvantage on his own.  Those two would get along just fine for a while, then one wouldn't like the way the other one looked at him and the war started.  For the next two years, I bought enough blood stop and Furall, I could have started my own manufacturing plant with the money I'd spent.  It wasn't pretty.  Both bucks were doing what came naturally.  Life is sooooo much more peaceful now, and I'm saving lots of money.


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## cmjust0 (Jul 28, 2009)

lilhill said:
			
		

> Both *bucks* were doing what came naturally.


Keyword being _bucks._  It also seems as though your two bucks were mature when they were introduced..

We're dealing with two wethers here, aged 8 weeks and 16 weeks..  They'll practically grow up together, and there are no sex hormones involved..

I'm sticking with my position...  Dehorning -- even by banding -- carries risks that I don't believe are necessarily justified _at this point in time_.  It may eventually come to that, but I don't think they've been given enough time (and possibly enough space -- we don't know) to become acclimated to living together yet.

If they've got enough space so the little one can get away from the big one, I think they'll settle down.  There may be the occasional scuffle, as goats are wont to do, but I wouldn't expect it to get anywhere near as nasty as a fight between two mature bucks full of testosterone.

But, again...that's just MHO.


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## Rhondax6 (Jul 28, 2009)

They have plenty of room to get out of each others way and I'm going to make a door to a dog house that only the baby can fit through.  We've been introducing them slowly for now; separate pens, minimal interaction with balls glued on the horned goat.  The 16 week old still wants to kill the 8 week old but it isn't as bad as day 1 so it's progress.  Thanks for all of your advice!


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## cmjust0 (Jul 28, 2009)

Rhondax6 said:
			
		

> They have plenty of room to get out of each others way and I'm going to *make a door to a dog house that only the baby can fit through*.


That is a tremendously excellent idea.  Well done!



			
				Rhondax6 said:
			
		

> We've been introducing them slowly for now; separate pens, minimal interaction with balls glued on the horned goat.  The 16 week old still wants to kill the 8 week old but it isn't as bad as day 1 so it's progress.  Thanks for all of your advice!


Define "wants to kill," if you would..  

Also...maybe I'm not clear on this, but I don't think I realized that your original post was the "day one" scenario.  I figured it had already been a few days by that point...?


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## lilhill (Jul 28, 2009)

cmjust0 said:
			
		

> lilhill said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


True.  When I read the post, my mind zeroed in on "horns" and "disbudded" and I did not absorb the part about them _both_ being wethers.  However, I would still have the horns removed as you've also got a child in the picture and the danger of injury by the horns is still there.


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## Rhondax6 (Jul 28, 2009)

Kill = shoving the baby into the ground with his horns and continuing to ram even though he's already down.  As as soon as he gets up, doing it again and again.  It's all new to me......

We've had the 16 week old, the one with the horns, for 2 months and the 8 week old, sans horns, arrived Saturday.  We've glued tennis balls to the end of the horns to prevent injury although until we introuduced the new goat, he never used them for bad.  We also have six children ranging in age from 7 - 18.


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## cmjust0 (Jul 28, 2009)

Rhondax6 said:
			
		

> Kill = shoving the baby into the ground with his horns and continuing to ram even though he's already down.  As as soon as he gets up, doing it again and again.  It's all new to me......


Sounds about right.  It's worse when it's a full adult boer doe squishing a 2 week old kid into barn post or putting one down on its side and shoving it across a roadbed of No. 2 gravel.

They're born with a hard bark, though...they live.

When we dropped our 8wo disbudded nubian into the already-cramped kid pen, the kids he joined were several months old with decent little horns coming along...and there were FOUR of them...beefy little boer-crosses, no less.  Two were intact bucks.  They batted him around like a ragdoll for a while, barely even letting him into the hay or around the water bucket.

Took a while, but it all settled out.  Like I said, two of them are in a pen together right now..  The cross buck is our urinary calculi case, and when he's had to go to the vet, the nubian boy cries like a baby and is absolutely inconsolable until his bestest buddy comes back home.

That may change as our two get older (if the UC boy doesn't die, that is..), but yours are wethers..



			
				Rhondax6 said:
			
		

> We've had the 16 week old, the one with the horns, for 2 months and the 8 week old, sans horns, arrived *Saturday*.


Saturday being 7/25/09...the day of your original post.  ;D

I really think they'll work it out soon, and when they do, you'll look back on all this and chuckle.





			
				Rhondax6 said:
			
		

> We've glued tennis balls to the end of the horns to prevent injury although until we introuduced the new goat, he never used them for bad.  We also have six children ranging in age from 7 - 18.


In a battle between a horned pygmy mix and a 7 year old...I dunno.  I think my money's on the 7 year old.   

If you really feel like someone's gonna get stabbed, you could always try tipping the pygmy's horns down to a flat spot about the size of a nickel before exercising what I consider to be "the nuclear option" of full-blown dehorning.

Just a thought.

Bet that pygmy looks funny with tennis balls on his horns, huh?


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