Читать книгу Raising Goats For Dummies - Cheryl K. Smith - Страница 43

Most goats will grow two horns (yes, even the females) unless they’re disbudded shortly after birth. (I tell you about disbudding in Chapter 9.) A minority of goats are naturally hornless, a trait called polled. Although polled goats are desirable because they save some work for the owner and some pain for the goat, in some dairy breeds, if you breed polled goats to each other, you may have a higher incidence of intersex goats (goats that have male and female sex traits).

Intersexuality in goats is a recessive characteristic seen only in females, which causes infertility. The one intersex doe who came from my farm acted like the worst kind of buck — constantly blubbering and mounting her pen mates.

The way to tell if a goat is polled (at least one parent must be polled for a goat to inherit the trait) is to look for the lack of a swirl on the head where the horns grow. Eventually, the polls will grow into rounded bumps — like a giraffe has, only much shorter.