Development of sexual behavior over several serving capacity tests in male goats

Abstract

Results from previous research suggest that male goats, cattle and swine do not require prior sexual experience as juveniles to exhibit their full potential in serving capacity tests as adults. Preliminary data in our laboratory indicate that juvenile goats exhibit profound separation stress from pen mates when acclimating to a novel space, such as during a sexual performance test. Performance in serving capacity tests can be influenced by factors other than sexual motivation and physical coordination, such as separation anxiety. There may be differences in how a goat habituates to a novel space versus how a goat learns to identify sexual partners. In this report we revisit the hypothesis that male goats do not require sexual experience to develop consistent adult sexual performance. Over eight consecutive weeks, we individually exposed six sexually-naïve male goats to 15 min serving capacity tests with sexually-receptive females and recorded the frequency of ejaculations and latency to ejaculate. Mean ejaculation frequency was significantly lower during the first week of testing compared to the frequency at weeks 2–8. Ejaculation frequency was also greater at weeks 7 and 8 than at weeks 1, 2 and 3. Mean latency to ejaculate was significantly higher during the first week compared with subsequent weeks. The results of this experiment suggest that male goats require at least one serving capacity test before they attain full sexual performance.