All my newborn goats are male!!!

i have three Mamas who gave birth to 4 bucklings.  This is the second year in a row, no female doelings.  How is this possible, and is there a way to breed for.more females?  Thank you!

My understanding is that there is a lot that influences what sex you get but the primary influence is your Buck. Kind of like us, it is the father's influence that determines sex of the offspring.

I assume you have only one buck?

Normally it should be roughly 50/50. There's a couple small modifiers like social dominance within their herd that have been noted in studies. But if you're getting all males two years in a row, I'd get a new straw (maybe that one was freeze/thawed wrong?) or a different buck.

That is super interesting.  Almost all my lambs are female this year.

11 out of 14 so far are female.    I thought it was super weird.   I usually get 50/50

Ha! I feel you! We have five kids on the ground at the moment and only one doeling. Plus, we don't really eat goat... yet, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all these boys. I'd be interested to know what factors influence gender outcomes, outside of the buck.

That happened to me last year. Look up drought info and having all boys. Someone told me that once but I never dug into it. Hoping to get a new buck this go around.

I raise dairy goats in Washington state. I’m fairly new at it, but… my buddy who does it commercially and who I got my animals from often gets a lot of male kids. He waits until a given doe shows signs of being ready to breed, as in she’s ovulating, and bring the does to the buck pen one by one. So they are bred very close to ovulation. The two does I got from him last year were bred this way and they had all males babies.
This year I had three does bred here. I borrowed a buck and left him in with my does for six weeks. This way he was able to mate with the does earlier in their cycle, before ovulation. I have heard that male-producing sperm are faster and die sooner. With early insemination, the male sperm die off before ovulation and the female sperm are left to meet the egg when it is ready. With insemination right at or closer to ovulation, the male sperm arrive at the egg faster.

I had all female kids this year, total of six, due I think to having the buck with the does continuously for six weeks so that breeding could happen as early as possible relative to ovulation. It’s turns out it happened in the first few days after the buck arrived on the scene, but I didn’t know for sure until the kids were born five months later. I left the buck in for six months just in case any does cycled again.

I knew to bring the buck because of early signs of ovulation in the does. They were bred around Halloween and birthed 3/29, 3/30, and 3/31.

Lucas Limbach wrote:I raise dairy goats in Washington state. I’m fairly new at it, but… my buddy who does it commercially and who I got my animals from often gets a lot of male kids. He waits until a given doe shows signs of being ready to breed, as in she’s ovulating, and bring the does to the buck pen one by one. So they are bred very close to ovulation. The two does I got from him last year were bred this way and they had all males babies.
This year I had three does bred here. I borrowed a buck and left him in with my does for six weeks. This way he was able to mate with the does earlier in their cycle, before ovulation. I have heard that male-producing sperm are faster and die sooner. With early insemination, the male sperm die off before ovulation and the female sperm are left to meet the egg when it is ready. With insemination right at or closer to ovulation, the male sperm arrive at the egg faster.

That's an interesting observation, will have to keep that one in mind. We also have a couple dairy cows and have heard some folks swear by flushing the cow with increased ACV prior to ovulating to better ensure heifer calf. Don't have any direct experience with that one just yet to say if it works or not.

Lucas Limbach wrote:I raise dairy goats in Washington state. I’m fairly new at it, but… my buddy who does it commercially and who I got my animals from often gets a lot of male kids. He waits until a given doe shows signs of being ready to breed, as in she’s ovulating, and bring the does to the buck pen one by one. So they are bred very close to ovulation. The two does I got from him last year were bred this way and they had all males babies.
This year I had three does bred here. I borrowed a buck and left him in with my does for six weeks. This way he was able to mate with the does earlier in their cycle, before ovulation. I have heard that male-producing sperm are faster and die sooner. With early insemination, the male sperm die off before ovulation and the female sperm are left to meet the egg when it is ready. With insemination right at or closer to ovulation, the male sperm arrive at the egg faster.

This is very interesting and corresponds with information I've read from a long-time New Zealand goat breeder, Irene Ramsay. She relates how an old cattle farmer in her area swore by waiting until late in the cow's heat to breed. He said he got mostly females that way. Irene thought it had to do with pH, that the doe's system became less acidic and therefore favored females. She did it with her goats and said she got more females. I've practiced this with my goats and generally tend to get more females, although there's no guarantee.

Bill Mollison confirms the pH idea somewhat in some of his lectures, where he states that in desert areas, where the soil is more alkaline, then more female births occur.

Another tidbit I picked up was from Pat Coleby's Natural Goat Care. In it she states that feeding a diet heavy in alfalfa results in more male births. Might be legumes in general, with the idea that heavy legume diets increase the goat's need for iodine and that female fetuses require more iodine than male.