Farewell to Our Big Guy "Axel"
selling a buck, breeding protocols
8/31/20263 min read
Today was a little bittersweet here. Our big guy, Pine Meadow Dairy Axel, left for his new home.
Axel has been with us for a huge part of our journey with Oberhaslis. In fact, if you've ever visited our website, you've probably seen him. His picture has been front and center on our homepage for as long as we've had one.
Axel is a big, beautiful, incredibly gentle buck. During breeding season, he could be standing there in full rut, smelling absolutely atrocious, with a doe in heat right in front of him, and our kids could still walk right up to him. He was always kind and trustworthy with them. That's something we've appreciated about him just as much as his looks or what he's contributed to our herd.
Axel did leave us a little thinner than we would have liked, and that's something we're taking as a lesson from this breeding season.
This year we tried something new with our does. In the weeks leading up to breeding, we started a flushing protocol. Despite the name, nobody is getting flushed with anything! Flushing simply means increasing a doe's plane of nutrition before breeding and continuing it through the breeding period. Traditionally, it's used to support ovulation and conception and can sometimes increase the number of kids conceived.
For our girls, that meant adding some extra energy and nutrition (we used oats and sunflower seeds) in the weeks surrounding breeding, with the goal of sending them into pregnancy in good condition and giving them the best start we could. All are looking gorgeous, and a few are almost chunky.
In hindsight, we should have been thinking just as proactively about the boys like we did last year. It just got missed this year with everything else.
We weren't proactive enough about putting extra condition on our bucks before breeding season started this year. Once rut kicked into full gear, Axel had much more important things on his mind than eating. By the time we realized just how much condition he'd dropped, we were playing catch-up.
We increased his feed and started working on getting weight back on him, but putting weight on a buck in the middle of rut is a whole lot harder than putting it on before rut begins.
That's one we're owning.
Next year, our pre-breeding preparation won't just be about the girls. While the does are getting their flushing protocol, we'll also be evaluating the bucks and increasing their nutrition as needed so they enter breeding season with enough condition to carry them through rut. We don't want fat bucks, of course, but we've now seen firsthand how quickly a busy breeding buck can burn through his reserves when eating drops pretty far down his priority list while he paces the fencline.
Farming has a way of continually teaching you things, no matter how much you think you know. Axel taught us quite a few things while he was here, and apparently he had one more lesson for us on his way out.
This was always planned to be Axel's final breeding season with us. As our herd has grown and his daughters and relatives have become a bigger part of it, it's time for us to move forward with the next generation.
Knowing that doesn't make watching him leave any easier.
Thankfully, Axel isn't quite finished with Loki Farms yet.
Several of our does were bred to him before he left, and we're very much looking forward to his final kid crop here in 2027. We're hoping there might be a few daughters among them who will carry a little more of the big guy forward in our herd.
Axel has gone on to a new home where he'll get to continue doing what bucks do best, while Tails begins taking over more of the herdsire duties here moving forward.
We're going to miss seeing that big handsome face, and his picture isn't coming off the homepage, either.
He may not live here anymore, but Axel is part of the foundation of what we're building at Loki Farms. Hopefully, we'll be seeing pieces of that big, gentle, sweet buck in our herd for generations to come.
Good luck at your new home, Axel. You were a good one.
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