So it is very apparent that everyone wants to breed does each year to acquire that wonderful fresh goats milk each spring. This is the way that most people want to breed because this is what everyone does. I am going to experiment this next few years with a different kind of breeding program idea, breeding every other year and milking through. My plan is to have two sets of 6 does, breeding one set of 6 one year and milking them through unto the time that the next 6 are weaning there babies at 5 months old. So they would milk until about July of the next year. This will give them about 7 to 8 months off every other year from milking, with 2 to 3 months of that being free of milking AND pregnancy. This is all going to be very dependent of how the doe is milking at about 9 months into her lactation and if I think she will stay in milk through winter. If she is a yearling first freshener and barely milking much by month 9 then I may well go on and breed her again so that she doesn’t have a whole wasted year and try to see if she has the potential the next go round. If I end up having several that can do this and a few that can not then I will probably only be keeping babies from the ones that can and include this in things to breed towards. This kind of breeding schedule is supposed to increase their length of life and quality of health. I will keep this post updated over the next few years to let you know if it works here or not and how the does perform for better or for worse.