Culling
Culling is at once the most difficult and the most important decision a breeder will make. As a result of your observation and patience, you have now created an optimal breeding strategy and you hope for the best in the kids. However, chance is a cruel master and all your intelligent decisions may not give you exactly what you were looking for. This is when you need to decide what it is you value the most. As long as you are producing milk, there will always be the need to sell animals (the problem of exponential growth). The key is selling the animals that make the least sense for your breeding strategy. How do you decide who to sell?
At our farm, we have a list of priorities that we select for:
1. Health and ability to browse for substantial nutrition is our first concern. Any goat that cannot maintain a healthy diet given a natural setting will be culled.
2. Next we make sure that the personalities of the goats are compatible with a moderate sized milking herd – there are some goats that are just not able to get along well in this type and size of herd.
3. Milk production is our next goal and with that comes conformation.
The first two priorities are easy to assess – have they gotten sick, how well have they gained weight before and after weaning, behavior in the herd, etc. The third priority is much more complex and needs to be examined in more detail.
Ideally, all animals on a farm will have official linear appraisals, but unless you have a great deal of resources you aren’t going to appraise every 8 week old doeling or wether that you are about to sell. Therefore, it is important to informally evaluate each goat in your herd with official scorecards. Though I would never claim to be an expert with this, practice is an awesome teacher. The Illustrated Standard of the Dairy Goat by Nancy Lee Owen is one example of a book that can help educate beginners in this area. You can also participate in an online judging class provided by AGS.
There are three main advantages for evaluating each goat that is on your farm annually (no matter how long they stay) –
OK, so how do we go about this? First, we try to remove as many environmental factors as possible. Lactating does should be compared to averages calculated from does in the same freshening, same milking frequency (if kids are with mother, then litter size should be considered), and which season lactation starts. Weight gain should be figured with litter size and mother’s dominance in the herd taken into account. Pasture, hay, water, minerals, feed, bedding, hoof trimming, etc. should all be controlled for when evaluating goats originating from different herds.
The number of environmental factors to control for will change over time, depending on traits examined, origin of goats, and observations that you make over time (for instance, the ability to examine topline in goats with a natural coat will change in summer versus winter; or the effects of copper deficiency can greatly influence short term health).
First, when looking at freshened does, we look at our informal milk yield records. If the goats do not meet the minimum production level, then we will not keep that goat (they will be sold as pets, since they are not adequate dairy animals). Again, it is important to make sure all the factors are accounted for before deciding if the minimum level has been met.
Here is an example of how the environment can influence traits:
If you are breeding for milk production and you have decided to compare two does, you are most likely going to use their milk production records. Consider two Alpine does with 305-day milk yield records: Daisy with 2000 lb and Buttercup with 1400 lb. At first one might think that Daisy is the better doe. However, she initiated her lactation in January at 24 months of age while Buttercup began in April at 12 months of age. Buttercup kidded at a younger age and less favorable season.
Adjusting for age and season will correct for this handicap. Her records then are calculated as deviations from the average milk yield of other Alpine does with their records adjusted for age, season of kidding, and same herd and year as Daisy and Buttercup. It ends up that Buttercup's production is 258 lb above herd-year-season average and Daisy's is 70 lb below. Given no other information and assuming that the herdmates of each doe were genetically similar, one should select Buttercup over Daisy as the better doe for milk yield.
Next, all goats will get evaluated using official scorecards (though we are definitely not official judges). Each person on the farm will complete their own score card, since everyone has a different way of looking at a goat. This way we can use the averages to make a better decision. Although predicting an udder in a doeling is almost impossible, we can take into account their parents’ genetics (since heritability is moderate), the steepness of the rump, the overall teat location, etc.
In general, you could just say that the goat with the higher overall score will be retained and the lower score culled. However, we take into account what traits we are able to improve given the genetics of our herd. Here is a very simplified example – let’s say that doe A scores 1 point lower than doe B. Doe A scored lower because of rear udder height and doe B scored low because of fore udder attachments, everything else was equal. Let’s also say that you have a buck that consistently provides alleles for rear udder height, but you have no buck that corrects for fore udder attachment. If you keep doe B (since she has the higher overall score), there is little you can do to improve her fore udder attachment except look for a new buck. However, if you keep doe A, you can hope to improve the rear udder height with your proven buck. This truly emphasizes the importance of every buck’s position in the herd (the more perfect and proven they are, the more options you have for culling).
Although doe B was culled from your herd, she may be a perfect choice for another herd. The advantage in knowing the exact faults in your animals is that you can provide a buyer with the best does for their situation. Maybe they don’t have a buck that throws great rear udder height, but maybe their buck throws fantastic fore udder attachments. By working together as breeders, we can create the most optimal dairy goats for the future.
At the end of the day, we look over pedigrees and personalities, compare scorecards, make tough decisions, and decide who to keep and who to sell. We may regret our decisions in the future, but that is the fun of breeding!
Weathertop Farm
Registered Nigerian Dwarf Goats
Johnsonville, New York 12094
Rensselaer County
Email us: weathertop@littlemilkers.com
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