# Double teats?



## dvm-mommy (Feb 5, 2009)

I am not sure how I did not notice this before...took my 9 year old to point it out today.
Sophie's doeling, a 50/50 Boer cross we discovered today has double teats on both sides. And I don't mean double teats as in 4 separate teats...but they are fused together and at the very end of both teats they "splay" and there are actually 2 teat openings"..so 4 openings total... but 2 actual teats to grab onto. Am I making sense??? Kinda like 2 fingers fused together into one finger but then at the very end of this, there are two distinct fingertips.

I have seen supranumery teats and know they are undesirable...I am gathering this is just a variation?? As she will be used to produce dead-end meat kids (we will breed her back to a 100% Boer buck)...this shouldn't matter right? We will not be milking her. Of course if this will cause a problem, we will just slaughter her...*gulp*. ugh, and we just sold the other Sophie doeling 3 days ago....


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## KJFarm (Oct 26, 2007)

Very, very common for Boers to have mutiple teats, and especially "fish tail" teats.


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## Jonna (Feb 10, 2009)

I have also always heard of this as fishtale teats and seen lots of it in the meat goats.


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## pokyone42 (Oct 26, 2007)

As long as you are going to just let the kids nurse, and sell her kids for meat, I don't see a problem. Years ago, I bred and showed dairy goats. Then we were without goats for a while. Then we bought two Alpines that had been bred to a Boer... One had a doe kid with fishtail teats.. EXACTLY what you are describing. I was absolutely horrified, and decided we did not want to perpetuate THAT in our herd. A buyer fell in love with her, in spite of the teat problem, and so we sold her. We changed bloodlines after that. Having only 2 Alpines now, and a bunch of Boer crosses, I am finally sort of getting used to the multiple teat issue, but we have not had anymore fishtail teats since that one kid. As I said... as long as you are not producing breeding stock from her... you should do okay.


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## Tim Pruitt (Oct 26, 2007)

I couldn't stand the fish tail and multiple teats in the Boer breed - so I don't do Boers and if I did, I would breed them for correct teats. It is something that those breeders need to work on. However for nursing kids, you will probably be ok if the teats don't get too big for their mouth.


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## Sondra (Oct 25, 2007)

Oh if your selling the offspring to 4-h kids then they can't be shown.


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## dragonlair (Mar 24, 2009)

It takes a lot of getting used to going form dairy does to Boers. I was horrified when I saw my first 4 teated doe! I tried to find 2 teated bucks, and did pretty well with the 3 I had. Most of my kids were being born with 2 clean teats, but occasionally I'd get one with 4. multiple teats just don't look right!

The thing I would worry about with fish teats is them being to big to fit in a newborns mouth and then too much milk coming out of the 2 orifices. I'd take a chance and keep her but just check her teats when the kids are born.


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## Qvrfullmidwife (Oct 25, 2007)

fishtail teats are common in boers and that is likely where they are coming from.

~however~ they can also be genetic in dairy breeds and, sometimes, even have an environmental factor. 

Absolute disqualification if you want to show her.

However...we had a doeling with one. We kept her for meat. As she grew...amazingly, one side of that fishtail teat got smaller and smaller until it was nothing but a slight bump on the other teat and we see no orrifice. Havent decided if we will breed her, likely will...she is the only doe we got out of one of our best milkers before she died of bloat from the raid on the feedroom last December. And by 4 month old she had a nice precocious udder as well.


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## Bernice (Apr 2, 2009)

like everyone so far has said, those fishtail teats or multiple teats are fairly common in Boers. We raised Boers yrs ago and had a few with them. The first time we encountered multiple teats was with a very wild and wooly Boer who was just getting used to the place. She had just freshened with twins. I wasn't able to check her for milk b/c she was so skiddish. Within hrs of kidding the babies died. Hmmmm......how could that be? We finally caught her and when I looked she had really tiny teats at the top of her teats that the milk came out of, not the longer ones. It was the strangest thing. So needless to say the babies died from lack of milk. 

Like Tim we gave up raising them.


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## Pam V (Jan 3, 2009)

We were given a boer cross doe several yeas ago and she had one teat like that. It was fused about half way down, the other half being two seperate orifices. We heard boerers had them so just shrugged it off. But when I milked her the milk sprayed east and west and ran down my arm with each squeeze :really. Took some time to position just right not to do that. She had amazing rich milk...but not a whole lot. It wasn't worth the time to milk her, we didn't want boerers (since we dehorned her the one other person we know with boer crosses didn't want her) so she was sausage. IT was good sausage, though. 

Pam


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## Bella Star (Oct 27, 2007)

That's why breeding a 2 teat dairy doe to a 4 teat Boer can cause a major udder problem  .
A Boer mix doe is usually not a good milker and dry's up fast, and Boer udder attachments, teats, milk capacity, milking length of time usually always need improvement. Any doe with multiteats or any teats that kids cant suck gets culled as I dam raise here. The Boer is what dominates a cross breeding .


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## wheytogosaanens (Oct 26, 2007)

We don't EVER keep or sell (as breeding stock) a Boer doe kid with a fish teat. AND NEVER EVER a buck that comes from a doe with a fish teat or has one himself. Sadly, some breeders do.....

I have been known to keep a doe kid with a fish teat to see if it develops into a non-issue or to see if she perpetuates it to her kids (about a 25 % chance!!!), but won't pass that problem onto someone else. More of a science experiment for us... with that said, there are some excellent Boer goat breeders out there who follow the same guidelines and also breed for excellent milk production. There is a good reason that the meat truck should include does as well as young buck kids!

Of course, we have heard of fish teats in Dairy Goats as well - it happens sometimes. Most dairy goat breeders instantly cull for that - and they should! Many Boer goat breeders are catching up with Dairy goats, but the 4 teats (which we don't have a problem with when they are properly separated) does seem to result in more weird teat configurations. but Boers haven't been being bred and monitored for these issues nearly as long as Dairy goats. 

Probably not something you want to mess with - and yes, the kids can fail to thrive as a result of fish teats. Why no one wants a doe with fish teats. 

Not all kids have the same teats - can you call the folks you sold her to and ask them? you could wait and see how the teats work out or cut your losses and get a Boer doe from better lines (actually what I would recommend - time is money anyway, and why not spend your time and money on an animal that at least is correct in the basics).


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## Madfarmer (Nov 18, 2008)

My first goat, a grade Nubian I bought for $40 in 1970, had this on one side. Milking was a PITA, 'cuz the side teat wanted to squirt me in the face! If the doe is worth it, & it's a problem, a good vet can take it off & re-plumb the milk duct to the main oriface. If she's just going to nurse kids, it'll prob'ly be OK

Tom


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## goatkid (Oct 26, 2007)

I had a Nubian kid born here that had one normal teat and one fish teat. It wasn't real obvious when she was born, but easy to see when she was a bit older. I sold her to a man who breeds Boer cross, along with another doeling who had an extra teat that was not a fish teat. He wanted my cull does because he was using them to breed for meat kids. Kathie


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## adillenal (Feb 6, 2009)

I have only had this happen once in my 25 year career and it was a purebred LaMancha. I culled that kid even though I had raised her on a bottle and she was out of my best doe. To me culling a breed defect means kill, not sell to someone else to perpetuate the defect. But that is just my opinion.


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## Dacaree (Jan 31, 2009)

Can anybody post pictures, I have never seen this. Only heard about it.


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## DostThouHaveMilk (Oct 25, 2007)

Bella Star said:


> That's why breeding a 2 teat dairy doe to a 4 teat Boer can cause a major udder problem  .
> A Boer mix doe is usually not a good milker and dry's up fast, and Boer udder attachments, teats, milk capacity, milking length of time usually always need improvement. Any doe with multiteats or any teats that kids cant suck gets culled as I dam raise here. The Boer is what dominates a cross breeding .


 I think this depends on the percentage of Boer in the breeding. We have a Boer/Saanen buck (Boer sire, Saanen dam) and his 1/4 Boer daughters are a dream to milk. Their udders are great, two teats are wonderful and they produce far longer than a "typical" Boer doe does. We never had does that weaned their kids at less than 6 months before we got Twyla, a high percentage Boer cross. The rest of our Boer crosses (up to 5/8ths Boer with some 75% and higher freshening this year) nurse their kids almost as long as our dairy does do (8-10 months). I will be interested to see how long Midge, our fullblood, nurses her doeling before weaning.

As far as fishtail teats, my first time seeing it was when we started using the two half Boer brothers (the other brother was polled and his dam was a Togg/Alpine). I think we've had only one doe born with fishtail teats here and her daughters have had two clean teats when she was bred to my two teated Boer buck. The problem is I cannot garantee her sire was one of the Boer cross bucks. Her dam's half brother also bred at her dam, so the doe could have been the result of inbreeding. The twin brother was clearly part Boer, but the doeling was not as clear on her genetic makeup.
I do have an older high percentage Boer doe with five functioning teats. Two basic teats on each side with one side having a double teat as the main teat (the two forward teats are much smaller but still productive). 
Twyla's double teat. If you look in the hair above it yuou can maybe see the third teat on that side. 








Her other side- two teats.








Her first time freshening here she produced an 11 pound buck, a 5.5 pound doe and a partially reabsorbed fetus. The buck could take both of the double teats in his mouth to nurse and the doeling would just take one teat end in her mouth to nurse. When they nursed that teat. Since all five function they had plenty of choices.

My only Fullblood doe also has some really bad teat structure. She was recovering two worm overloads and so I got her for free. Her daughter out of my Fullblood Boer buck (two teated) has four clean teats...so far.








You can't really see the left teat well, but it splits just at the tip. Hers are more fish tail teats.

As long as the kids can nurse, if you dam raise, that is the biggest concern. I was worried about Midge, the Fullblood, but her kid has had no issues at all nursing her. 
Blind teats cause issues until the kids figure it out. This is why I strip all teats to determine which ones function and which don't. Thankfully we don't have that many multi teated does who don't have all functioning teats.

http://www.abga.org/teat-structure.php


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## catdance62 (Mar 2, 2009)

One of my first goats had so many teats she looked like a cow--and she was black and white like a Jersey too! The only doeling she ever had a chance to give birth to (we culled her) was born normally. All those teats did milk though!


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## DostThouHaveMilk (Oct 25, 2007)

Like a Jersey? Or do you mean like a Holstein?


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## Qvrfullmidwife (Oct 25, 2007)

"I have been known to keep a doe kid with a fish teat to see if it develops into a non-issue or to see if she perpetuates it to her kids (about a 25 % chance!!!)"

This is not always true. Maybe in boers, but in dairy goats not always. When it is purely genetic, then yes, but it is now felt that there are cases in which there can be a distinct environmental cause.

We had a situation where we had, one kidding season, fishtail teats. We didn't have one, we didn't have two, we had several. They were from parents where the breeding had been repeated year after year after year with absolutely no evidence of this what-so-ever and we saw it not in one breed, nor in two breeds but in three separate breeds. I felt that the odds were pretty low that we, all of a sudden had uncovered this genetic tendency or that we had somehow, managed to come up with bloodlines that passed this on in three distinct breeds yet everyone kept telling me that it was purely hereditary!

Slowly but surely I have found references to it having an environmental factor as well. Because of this while I am mindful that there may be more o it than meets the eye, here we take a wait and see attitude. Some had told us to cull not only the affected doe kid but both parents as well! This was ridiculous ad some of these animals came to us after long and productive lives elsewhere, having offspring in many herds definitely across the state, even in some cases across the country!


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## catdance62 (Mar 2, 2009)

Maybe a Holstein...heck, I really dont' know much about cattle except I know a Brahma when I see it and a Texas Longhorn!!


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