Managed breeding can sound a bit complex, but once you understand the basic principles it's actually pretty easy to implement. Here's what you need to know to get started:

The Basics of Managing Breeding Seasons
Some animals are very like wild counterparts and have set breeding seasons. However, most of our domestic livestock are no longer locked into those cycles. That means we can apply the concept of controlled breeding or managed breeding – exposing females to studs at phased intervals that we choose to let us control every aspect thereafter.

The steps to controlled breeding are pretty simple. We work backwards through a lifespan or production cycle, looking at the conditions surrounding us and our animals, to include feed needs and forage, but with other considerations as well for varying life phases.

Seasonal availability of foods factors into wildlife breeding, and can play a part in managing our livestock as well.

We start with the yield we want, whether it’s milk, eggs or meat. Then we look at how long it takes to get there from birth.

The time it takes varies, species to breed to specific location, and by the yield we intend to harvest.

There’s a big difference in the time it will take a sub-adult goat doe to start making us milk than the time it will take a doe purchased after a breeding is confirmed, and between that dairy yearling and wethers raised for meat.

Whether for a secondary product (milk, eggs) or for meat, goats will get there faster than cattle; chickens faster than turkeys.

The amount of time that animal will continue producing also varies, both over a single completed cycle or annual cycles, and over lifetimes. We can manage breeding for replacements, inside a single-year cycle or on a multi-year cycle.

Feed quality also impacts production age, with forage-fed animals a little leaner and sometimes significantly slower to yield or with lower total yields. That can affect our management plans.
We might choose to plan kidding outside frigid & damp seasons so the young are at less risk; conversely, kids born in winter or early spring are closer to weaning as pasture becomes available for them, or we might plan on sheltered birthings when livestock is already penned and barned instead of caring for a pasture flock/herd as well as shed queens.

Different breeds within species reach their production sizes and ages in different times, too.

For example, meat goats can be milked, but they tend to produce a very high calorie, high fat milk in a very definite bell curve and for a shorter period of time than a dairy goat that lactates for 250-300 days. The dairy goat’s production will resemble a plateau for a portion of time, then taper off more gently. Knowing that, we might control buck exposure to meat does very differently.

Because of bagged feed and hay, and years of tinkering, we can control when they’re bred and thus condense our birthing and harvest seasons – or spread them out if that’s the goal.

Once we know the ages and plan the birth months, we count back through the gestation period to the ideal breeding season.

Factors in Controlled Breeding
Whether we’re old hats or just getting started, controlled breeding can help us. Counting backwards lets us consider what the pasture or barn looks like for birthing, our own schedules, other demands for our time such as busy garden and tree-crop harvests, predictable expenditures and income fluctuations, and even travel and vacations.

It lets us consider viable sperm counts in high summer heat compared to the rest of the year, body condition of the dams, and food availability of the type that our young – and their nursing mothers – need most in those cycles.

The two NRCS sheets from “Controlled Calving Seasons” here are really nice examples of factors to consider, as well as nice visual representations.

The first page looks at the practice of controlled breeding with pro-con breakdowns for Winter, Spring and Autumn calving. The second page uses a pie graph to visually represent the life stages and nutrient demands of female cattle for beef production.

The time-frames differ, but most laying hens, meat breeding stock, and dairy goats have body stresses and peak production cycles similar to the dairy cattle shown here. The number of years they can repeat those cycles differs hugely, as do the amounts of feed, fencing, and human labor to reap the harvests.

Whether its meat or dairy, mammals or poultry, the basic tenets hold true. The goal is to help tailor breeding for times when livestock best fits our intended harvest goals and can be produced the most economically.

We can create the same breakdowns for when we allow hens to sit nests, taking into account the protein needs of the young as they grow as well as when we want a replacement nest of layers to get brooded so that we’re getting the most out of our feed.

We might also look at winter weather, or it might be pasture condition from typical summer droughts that most drive our timing. We might cycle the most and largest livestock around our water capabilities or freezer/canning capacity.

Available feed – and the nutrient content of feeds – and pasture conditions at different life stages should play a role in selecting breeding-birthing periods.

The general factors can be applied even if we don’t segregate breeding studs, by helping us choose what to do with each set of young.

By working through the factors such as in the NCIS sheets, we might discover that it’s far more economical to be culling one or another set, whether they’re intended for meat or to expand or replace dairy or egg producers.

We can earmark various litters or nests as keepers versus poussin or suckling harvests, fryers versus roasters, looking at when they’ll be producing or ready for harvest, and the inputs to get them there, and the “costs” on our pastures and breeding stock.

Have you ever used managed breeding? How did it work for you? What livestock breeding tips do you have? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Article Source: The Prepper Journal