So. It's early September, and you need to decide which bucks to breed our does to. Obviously, in this situation, you can just call me. But it will probably be helpful for you to have some idea of the criteria we're looking for in a buck!
We start with the initial assumption that a buck is available for 'stud service'. If the farm doesn't offer stud service, that's an obvious no-go! For the sake of example, I'm going to look at the Tsunami-Cassie pairing, with brief departures as needed to illustrate my point.
Basic Criteria:
-Conformation to the breed standard
-Milking ability (i.e. that of his dam/granddam and daughters)
There are several subcategories and different ways of looking at these criteria, so we'll look at these one at a time. To evaluate a lot of these, we'll go to adgagenetics.org, a very useful site.
Conformation to Breed Standard:
Subcategories:
-Buck's conformation
Start by clicking on the 'pedigrees' tab. In the search box, type the buck's full name (which you can find out from the breeder's website), and then click on his record when it comes up. You'll end up on a page that looks like this:
Click on "Linear History", and you'll find the buck's linear history, which should look something like this:
In general, when looking at appraisal scores, the idea score is in the mid- to high-30s. For a few traits (rear leg side view, and a couple of others), the ideal score is in the high 20s. When looking at this, it's also good to look at the doe's linear appraisal, and check that weaknesses are not matched to weaknesses (i.e. Tsunami brings really nice rump width, where Cassie brings good rump angle; Tsunami has good shoulders to Cassie's not-so-good shoulders). One or maybe two matched weaknesses are acceptable, but in general, please don't. :) Also, an "FS" over 80 is best.
-Dam & Granddam's udder conformation
Since you may have noticed that there's no udder scores for a buck, it's good to look at his Dam and Sire's Dam's udder scores. You'll want to click "Pedigree", and then click on the names of his dam and granddam to open their own pages and look at their LAs. In this case, here's his mom's udder:
When there is a bolded set of LA scores (in this case, the 2016 ones), that means that's the goat's official final LA score for their lifetime. Lindsay's udder looks great--high 20s and mid 30s on everything except teat placement, although that improves a little later in life. She also has an E for udder in 2016. This looks good. Let's look at Tsunami's granddam, Moonlight Sonata (who is one of the foundation does for the West Coast--a good sign!)
Sonata's LA is fantastic, although she could improve on Medial and Teat Diameter, both things that Lindsay has better scores on--a good sign! Looks like we're good on udder genetics.
-Daughters' conformation
If you click "Progeny" in Tsunami's profile, it'll take you to a list of his kids (including Dora!). The ones marked with "PT" or "T" in the "Eval" column have LA scores we can examine. Let's take a look:
One thing to keep in mind is that all these does have different moms, who each bring different strengths and weaknesses as well. But it's a good way to look for patterns of weakness that we might be concerned about. It looks like all these does are very dairy, have nice rumps (in general), and really nice udder heights, attachments, and arches. They are a bit weak on medial, although that tends to improve with age, and their teat placements and diameters vary, although all of them have better teat diameters than Cassie, which is a good sign! They also all have good legs, which is additionally, good. Again, look at how the buck's passed on strengths compare with the doe's.
Now on to milking ability:
Subcategories:
-Milk stars in his lines
A milk star means that a does has produced as much or more milk as most other does her age in either sheer production, protein, or fat. This is a good sign for milking! Milk stars are often found by looking at the breeder's website.
-*B/+B
This is essentially an easier way to evaluate milk stars. *B means that his dam and sire's dam both have milk stars. +B means that either three of his daughters have milk stars, or that two of his sons each have earned their +B. Whether a buck has a *B or +B can be found on the breeder's website, like so:
You can also see that his dad has his +B.
Minor Considerations:
-Polled/blue eyes/color
We do NOT breed for color. We don't breed for color. Let me repeat that a few more times...However, it is interesting to note if a buck has blue eyes or is polled. If the buck is polled, please don't breed him to one of our polled does--we could end up with a hermaphrodite. If he has blue eyes, that could make our (possibly blue eyed) kids be more in demand...but please, this IS NOT a major consideration.
-Inbreeding quotient
When you're done looking at all the other factors, click on the "Planning" tab in adgagenetics.org. Then input the sire's name and the dam's name into the correct boxes and hit enter. The resulting page will show you what the pedigree of the potential kids will look like, and how much inbreeding there is in the pedigree. This shows you how much genetic material (approximately) the parents share, and thus what percent inbred the kids will be. We don't want to go much above 3% inbred. It will look something like this:
In this case, the kids are not inbred at all, meaning they have no shared ancestors.
-Kid ratio
Kid ratio is the number of doe kids a buck has produced compared to the number of buck kids. Some bucks produce more bucks; some more does, rather like humans. We're going to look at Armani in this example, because he was used a lot this year, while Tsunami was only used once (although you'll notice it was all does!).
So he had 14 bucks and 16 does...a respectable ratio! This information can be found on the breeder's breeding schedule, in general.
So, so, so. Now you have some information to give me when you call, frantic, about who you should breed to!
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