Australian Mini Nubians. Gen 1&2

[OneFineAcre]

Surprised about the "sudden" interest in the mini's OFA.

You're surprised by intellectual curiosity?

Besides, we have a new member from Australia who breeds them and a new member from Texas considering if they are right for them?

 

[OneFineAcre]

Yes, they are very good breeders and produce some beautiful animals.

Breeding mini's is rather complex, because there are so many factors. Depending on the mini- breed there are specific focuses. All mini breeds share a common focus and that is te size the other major factors could include color for some, face structure another, ears on another , some have multiple considerations outside of size.

Sometimes it make appear to be gong backward but that is not always the case. For the Nubian and the Lamancha they both have the ear and face factors. Sometimes you focus on the ear sometimes you backtrack to focus on the structure, or in reverse structure then ear. It takes a lot of work

This year we chose one of our mini bucks to breed to our mini does and we based the pairing for structure.
Buck 1 had fantastic structure, longer , more lamancha all the way around except his ears were not as good as buck #2
#2 is more Nigie in body, structure, head but has far better ears.
The doe is very "Lamancha", and already has great ears... only real dwarf look in her is blue eyes and she is mini at 23 1/2 " . She will probably be 24"-25" by age 3.
The #2 buck we were not sure if we would even use him for breeding... the waiting game... he is maturing nicely and losing some of the "Nigie" body. We will see.
Buck #1 was evaluated by a judge in the MDGA - he is a very nice specimen!

Ears are not my first concern but for some it is.

Sometimes I wonder why I didn't do an easy breed like the Mini-Alpine!

I don't think it's complex. It's difficult, but not complex.
It's difficult because hybrids don't breed true. Meaning F1 x F1. You're not going to get the same result as the original cross. That's the same for cows, dogs, chickens and bass.
This is why I say it isn't complex. One achieves the desired results the same as one achieves the the desired result in any breeding program.
Culling.

 

[SheepGirl]

Instead of crossbreeding to make a miniature version of a breed, why haven't breeders selected for smaller animals? Sure it takes longer but it keeps the "mini" true to the breed it is supposed to represent.

 

[Southern by choice]

I don't think it's complex. It's difficult, but not complex.
It's difficult because hybrids don't breed true. Meaning F1 x F1. You're not going to get the same result as the original cross. That's the same for cows, dogs, chickens and bass.
This is why I say it isn't complex. One achieves the desired results the same as one achieves the the desired result in any breeding program.
Culling.

Culling is part of any program. I certainly will not play semantics with you OFA. You do not do anything with mini's, you breed one breed- Nigerians. Intellectual curiosity is one thing, advising on a program you are not involved with is another.

Often if you have 75/25 Std breed/Dwarf that is more advantages.
How strict of a program or how far you want to go with the mini's will influence how you breed.

 

[MsDeb]

Yes, @OneFineAcre , you understood me correctly. I thought the idea was to breed the 50/50 doe with with a full ND buck to go smaller. I've read over the info from the link a couple of times now (it's a slow day at work) and I'm starting to get my mind wrapped around the reasoning for it. Will just have to do some looking for someone else raising mini's when the time comes. Since my Nubian is not even 6 months old yet I guess I'll have plenty of time. Meanwhile our poor little ND buck is being very impatient. He's ready to start this process NOW.

 

[OneFineAcre]

Instead of crossbreeding to make a miniature version of a breed, why haven't breeders selected for smaller animals? Sure it takes longer but it keeps the "mini" true to the breed it is supposed to represent.

That's an interesting question.

 

[Pearce Pastures]

When crossing breeds, there is bound to be some fun in the gamble of it, because while you might be able to make an educated guess on what the outcome of a breeding might be, you just never can know for sure which traits will come out of a cross.

If trying to preserve for the most part the original goat's appeals and looks, only in smaller form, you could do that either by selectively breeding only the smallest of that breed and continually culling those that are too big or that don't fit the bill of a overall good representative of the breed. of course, if the parents are small because of poor genetics or hardiness, whatever, that might make for a small line of animals with health problems.

Or, like many are doing, you might occasionally toss in some miniature blood. Doing that does create complexity because you might change more than size and those genes, once in the pool, can pop up later on. I was just reading about this with rabbits, how folks may have made a cross 4 or 5 generations back to dark a color and then BAM that color comes up in much later litter.

I wonder if that might happen with mini breeders who toss in say NDs to a goat that does not have upright ears. Might that be a gene that floats around and then crops up at some point in a kid generations later.

Not much to add here, just curious and thinking.

 

[Dillo]

So this is what I have to look forward to! Thank you so much for sharing. I've just got one question that's been on my mind. Our baby (who will be mama) Nubian is my sweetheart. When you started selecting which does to keep did you also keep the original mama? I want to get to 2nd and 3rd generations but I also want to keep my Hazel.
Oh, and another question. We own the buck we'd originally planned to breed her with, but should we do first breeding with another ND buck and save our buck for breeding the next generation? (That thought just occurred to me...and so early in the morning!) Hazel's mama had triplets her first birthing and Hazel was one of a set of quads so I'm hoping that will carry on and we'll at least have a couple of good doe babies to choose from.

Hi Msdeb.
We only have one original mother at gen1 and are raising one of her daughters. I love her to death and she will stay with us forever regardless of grading. She's got a beautiful udder, and she's a great mum with a quiet personality. I'm very particular about what I keep, and I'd love to keep them all, but we don't have thousands of acres or funds to feed. Personally I have 3 main things I look for and that is conformation, colour and ear length. I also study the dam/sire & grands background to see which line I love the most. Once I have the ear length, then I never put back to a smaller eared buck. We'll be introducing new lines next year too, so that will add another avenue of fun.