Reproductive technologies are used routinely on-farm to hasten genetic progress and improve the efficiency of production. Some techniques have the potential to compromise the welfare of the animal so the use of methods that are less stressful will improve animal welfare on-farm. In goats, collection of semen from bucks for commercial use can be done via electro-ejaculation (EEJ) or using an artificial vagina (AV). We tested the hypothesis that semen collected from Cashmere bucks using an AV would be less stressful than EEJ. Buck sexual behaviour, vocalisation, struggling and plasma cortisol were measured as indicators of stress in three groups of males during EEJ, AV and natural mating (control). The data were analysed using repeated measures. Bucks that had semen collected using an AV expressed pawing and licking, but no flehmen response as seen with the natural mating. The absence of this behaviour did not appear to be a response to stress. During semen collections using an AV the bucks did not vocalise or struggle. Vocalisations had a higher decibel reading (F=19.31, P<0.01) in bucks subjected to EEJ (88.69 ± 1.07 db) compared to natural mating (56.32 ± 0.62 db). There were large differences between the treatments (F= 171.50, P<0.05) in the time from when the buck entered the pen to ejaculation - EEJ (275.3 ± 9.7 s), natural mating (82.5 ± 15.30 s) and AV (43.0 ± 6.05 s). Within a few minutes after semen collection, plasma cortisol was higher (P<0.05) for 20 minutes in the EEJ group (18.29 ± 1.84 µg/L) compared to bucks collected by AV (8.47 ± 1.07 µg/L) or natural mating (10.76 ± 1.94 µg/L) but returned to the pre-collection level by 40 minutes. Our data suggest that when natural mating is not possible, semen collection using an AV is less stressful than EEJ.