Recognizing a Good Dairy Goat

A "good dairy goat" is not just a doe with a pretty udder or one that
milks 4,000 pounds a year.  A "good dairy goat" must have a combination of
positive qualities, all of which allow her to produce lots of milk, have
numerous kids, and live a long productive life.  Many traits go together
to make a "good" goat, and if you learn to recognize these traits, you'll
be able to improve your breeding program and purchase better goats.

No matter what someone tells you, no one can look at a young kid and tell
that she'll be a permanent champion or have great udder attachment, but
you can learn to recognize certain positive traits that does of all ages
can possess.

The first thing that hits your eye is general appearance.  Structurally,
the doe should have a strong, level top line; her withers should blend
smoothly into the shoulder blades (no bumps or humps as you run your hand
down her neck over her withers and shoulders.)  Her front legs should be
wide apart, strong, and straight (not curved as you look at them from the
side); her rear legs should be set wide apart at the hocks, with a wide
arched opening in the escutcheon area.  As you look at her rear legs from
the side, they should be nearly perpendicular from hock to pastern.  Look
for short, strong pasterns, not ones that are broken and weak.  Does with
these positive structural traits should be productive does; they will have
the strength to withstand the rigers of heavy milking and strenuous kid
bearing for many years.

Dairy character is also important.  A doe should look feminine; she should
walk with gracefulness and animation.  She should be an "open" doe - her
ribs should be set wide apart; they should be flat (as should all her
bones) and long.  To feel the difference between flat-boned and
round-boned does, run your hands down the ribs of a number of does.
Flat-boned does' bones actually feel flatter; the space between ribs will
usually be wider.  The more times you doe this, the easier finding that
flat-boned doe will be.  With more experience, you'll actually be able to
pick out "dairy" does from across the barn or ring; they ooze femininity,
angularity, and, well, dairyness.

A "good" doe has body capacity, and you can see some of this potential
capacity even in kids.  Look for a doe with deep heart girth (more room
for the lungs and heart).  In small kids, look also for width of the chest
floor; a really narrow, pinched kid will never develop tremendous body
capacity.  When choosing a kid, don't worry about size of barrel as much
as body length in general.  In older does, look for increasing depth from
front to rear as you look from the side.  Remember that large body
capacity means more room for food and for kids.  Be careful, though, not
to mistake a fat, beefy doe for a capacious doe.  You're looking for a doe
with body capacity and dairy character.

For a doe to milk well over a long liftime, she'll need to have a
well-attached udder.  Udders without much attachment tend to flop around,
get stepped on, and generally are more prone to injury and disease than
udders that have strong attachment and ideally a smooth, well-extended
fore udder.  A doe can have a small pocket in the fore udder, though, and
still have a functional udder - if she has strong rear udder attachment
and a correctly attached medial suspensory ligament.  The smooth fore
udder is icing on the cake.  The medial suspensory ligament is the udder's
primary support; if it's weak, the whole udder will sag.  Finally, the
udder must be capacious (that means large in relation to the doe's size),
and when the doe is milked out, ideally there should not be a whole lot of
"beef" or "meat" in the udder.  The more there is, the less capacity there
is for milk.

Why do you need to know what a "good goat" looks like?  Remember, it costs
the same to feed a structurally sound goat as an unsound one, and a "good
doe" will give you many more years of service, more milk, and more kids,
with fewer health problems.  However, no matter how structurally sound a
goat is, if she doesn't have good management, she'll never reach her
potential.  So you must give your "good does" a sound program of health
care, feeding, and general maintenance, to insure that they live up to
their potential.

Caprine Supply Magazine, 2008