Thaba Goats Business Plan — Herd and Reproduction

Kidding percentage, kids weaned per doe rising from 1.38 to 1.94, doeling retention and the reproduction assumptions driving herd growth.

Herd and Reproduction

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Everything in this plan derives from four reproductive numbers: how many does are in the herd, how many kids each weans, how many of those survive, and how many doelings are kept rather than sold.

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5
Breeding does at year end	50	80	130	200	300
Average breeding does	50	65	105	165	250
Kids weaned per doe	1.38	1.54	1.68	1.82	1.94
Kids weaned	69	100	176	300	485
Kid survival to weaning	82%	85%	87%	89%	91%
Doe mortality	6.0%	5.5%	5.0%	4.5%	4.0%
Doelings retained	—	30	50	70	160
Goats sold	39	50	106	200	426

Figure 9. Retained doelings build the herd — 310 across five years.

The farm retains 310 doelings across five years and buys only twelve breeding bucks. That is why a herd of 50 becomes a herd of 300 on R188 000 of livestock purchases: the animals do the compounding. It is also why sales lag the herd, every doeling kept is a sale forgone this year in exchange for two kids a year for the next six.

8.1 The reproductive cycle

Element	Assumption	Comment
Kidding interval	Approximately eight months at maturity	Three kiddings in two years is achievable under good nutrition
Kidding percentage	Rising toward twinning as condition improves	Kids weaned per doe rises from 1.38 to 1.94
Age at first kidding	Twelve to fifteen months	A doeling retained today is productive in the second year
Doe productive life	Six to eight kiddings	Culled does are sold, not lost; cull income is in the revenue line
Buck to doe ratio	One buck to approximately 25 does	Twelve bucks bought across five years
Replacement rate	Approximately 18% of does a year	Covered from retained doelings rather than purchases

Kids weaned per doe rises from 1.38 to 1.94 across the plan. That single number carries roughly a third of the total margin improvement, and it comes from three things a farmer controls: doe condition at mating, kidding management, and the kid survival addressed in Section 9. None of them requires capital.

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Next section9. Kid Mortality: The Industry's Named Constraint