Description:
A female who never comes into heat, and therefore can't get pregnant, and almost always has smaller than normal teats. At birth, teat size may not look different from littermates. The teat size becomes more apparent as she reaches sexual maturity. But there is also a blood test available at UC Davis to confirm there is testosterone in her blood.
It happens during gestation when the blood of a brother and sister mix, which gives the doe too much testosterone and stops the development of her sexual organs. For this reason, there is usually a brother in the litter and it is more common among large litters of kids (4-6 kids) where the kids are tightly packed in, especially if the litter is predominantly male. However, many goat litters have male and female kids who are not affected.
As you can see from the pictures below, free martin teats are much smaller than same age doelings or even bucklings.
A female who never comes into heat, and therefore can't get pregnant, and almost always has smaller than normal teats. At birth, teat size may not look different from littermates. The teat size becomes more apparent as she reaches sexual maturity. But there is also a blood test available at UC Davis to confirm there is testosterone in her blood.
It happens during gestation when the blood of a brother and sister mix, which gives the doe too much testosterone and stops the development of her sexual organs. For this reason, there is usually a brother in the litter and it is more common among large litters of kids (4-6 kids) where the kids are tightly packed in, especially if the litter is predominantly male. However, many goat litters have male and female kids who are not affected.
As you can see from the pictures below, free martin teats are much smaller than same age doelings or even bucklings.
free martin normal littermate sister younger buckling
Inheritance:
This is actually not genetic, but something random that happens during gestation.
I will say that I have seen it a few times with top ten does. I don't know if that's because we cry more over sterile daughters of top ten does, or if they often have large litters, which encourages heavy milk production.
This is actually not genetic, but something random that happens during gestation.
I will say that I have seen it a few times with top ten does. I don't know if that's because we cry more over sterile daughters of top ten does, or if they often have large litters, which encourages heavy milk production.
Parents involved: