Selecting Breeding Stock

There is a lot that goes into this topic and I don't want to be too wordy, because I don't have the time to spend all day reading someone else's thoughts no matter how fascinating they may be or how interesting the topic, so I assume a lot of you don't either. Like many topics I'm trying to cover, the information applies equally to sheep and goats, so forgive me if I switch back and forth between sheep terms and goat terms instead of specifying every time that I'm referring to both species. I will specify if information applies to only one species.
 
People will tell you all the time that you should select breeding stock from someone managing their animals in the same way you do. This is absolutely true. You'll be happiest with the result if you select animals from someone that is managing them as close as possible to the way you manage your livestock. However, there's another key component that's every bit as important or more and that's breeder selection criterion. Let's dive a little bit into both.
 
First of all management criterion involves how you feed your animals, worm your animals, what vaccinations you give, etc. Do they give birth in individual 'jugs' or do they lamb or kid in a herd or flock with many other dams? Are they brought indoors to give birth? Are they birthing in a pasture? Do they have access to both indoor and outdoor locations when they give birth? There are no wrong answers, but how well an individual will do in a new environment is absolutely related to what they are accustomed to and what the last 3 generations in their bloodline have been accustomed to as far as things like feed for sure. Other aspects of management may not impact that many generations. Some of these things may not impact your decision to buy the animal, but they may impact how you manage that animal either initially or over time.
 
If we bring in a dairy goat from an intensively managed, high grain diet, she's going to have a learning curve at our place because her first task is going to be figuring out how to eat vegetation and which vegetation to eat. If we bring in a meat sheep or goat that's been getting a portion of grain as a regular portion of their diet on a daily basis, that individual could have fantastic genetics, but fall apart in our forage based environment. Animals on forage, whether that is hay, haylage/sileage, grass or brush have a constantly varying diet. Their nutritional intake isn't exactly the same every day. This creates a very different growth pattern than if the animal is given a base ration on a daily basis. It's not really important if the ration is grain based or includes alfalfa pellets or another standardized feed, the end result is that their nutritional intake will not ever dip below a certain standard on any day of the year. Again, this isn't good or bad, but when we buy breeding stock, we want to ask questions and make sure we take into account what the animal has been eating and consider how to best transition them to the diet or the management style that we have in mind.
 
One time we sold a ram lamb to someone. They were raising their animals very similarly in that they were forage based, but they gave their sheep what amounted to a pound per day per animal of alfalfa pellets in a single group feeder. They asked me to come look over some things that they wanted my input on and when I got there I was astounded at the size of the ram lamb (now a yearling ram) that we had sold them. We had both of his parents and this ram was massively taller and thicker in every direction than either of his parents or any other lambs we had raised from them (I mean, the now yearling ram's sister was still at our place...still is, in fact, although she's about ten years old at this point). I took photos and started asking other breeders why was this ram that we sold so large compared to his immediate ancestors and the universal conclusion was that it was the steady, predictable nutrition level that was the foundation of his diet. Again, it's not good or bad, but when you're evaluating breeding stock that you might want to add to yours, consider that what you see may not be what you get from the offspring unless you decide it's worth your while to change how you manage your stock.
 
Another example related to feed is that we've bought quite a few animals from a friend of mine that raises sheep on a forage based diet, but she has always brought them into a shelter at night. If I recall correctly, she has used a 'scoop' (whatever that is, right?) a day to bring her sheep in. She had anywhere from half a dozen to over two dozen ewes and never counted lambs, so as lambs started helping themselves, they made a greater and greater dent on that ration per animal. That was not enough to make any difference in the growth or ongoing maintenance of animals we have bought from her.
 
Another example of a really sad situation where taking into account previous management cost someone their new purchase happened to a friend. They had a completely forage based diet for their goats and were managing parasites with copper boluses, which take about 30 days to completely dissolve. They sold a first generation (from Africa) Boer to someone and wanting to make sure the doe didn't have a high parasite load, they gave her a copper bolus within a day or so of when the buyer took her home. Unfortunately, the buyer put the doe on a high copper grain pellet they liked as the mainstay of her diet and she died from copper toxicity within about 2-3 weeks from when purchased her because the combination of the high copper grain feed was too much after so recently getting the copper bolus. Both the buyer and seller didn't have any problems with their other animals under their management. This is why discussing management styles is so important. There was nothing about buying the animal that was a problem, but how the goat was transitioned from one management style to the other ended up killing the goat.

So if management style covers the care and diet aspects of how a breeder raises their stock, what is breeder selection criterion and why does it matter? 

Breeder selection is why in a given breed, the animals from one breeder might display a trait while the animals from another breeder do not. This is why I’ll often say that the breeder is more important than breed. For example, we raise a breed of sheep that is valued for their maternal traits. Good mothering is something the breed is known for, but if a given breeder selects only sheep of a given color, they may inadvertently lose the trait of excellent mothering. Let’s say they keep all the sheep that are a given color and then when they give birth, they make excuses or allowances for less than stellar mothering from the sheep of the color they particularly like. They’ll give the sheep of that color a higher priority despite not displaying the unseen trait, the breed is known for. This absolutely applies to goat breeds with color variety. This can result in the criticism that animals of a certain color don’t display the trait the breed was known for, but the reality is that the criticism only applies to the animals selected by a particular breeder or some breeders that prioritized color over the unseen traits. Anytime there are unseen traits like maternal instincts, parasite resistance, intelligence, problem solving, herding instincts, guardian instincts, temperament, etc. there can be a tendency to just assume they are there because the breed is known for it without the diligent selection to make sure those traits are continuing to be passed on from one generation to the next. This is why you have beautiful working dogs that can’t work, stunning dairy goats that can barely produce enough milk to feed their offspring, thick meat sheep that reject their lambs, and multicolored Kiko goats that don’t show parasite resistance. This is also how milky breeds like the Holstein cattle and Saanen goats have members of their respective breeds that produce less than the ‘standard’ 4% butterfat that used to be average while giving way more milk than their breeds did 80 years ago. Anytime one trait is selected for over all other traits, some of those other traits tend to be lost inadvertently over time because no one was paying attention to make sure the animals continued to display the other traits.

When breeders select for a trait, that doesn’t mean every animal they breed will have the traits that breeder is selecting for, but the more rigorously the breeder selects for the trait they want, the fewer representatives will be born from their breeding program that don’t display the desired trait. Breeders hopefully will select for more than one trait even though some might focus on one or another trait more than others certain years. For this reason, if you buy from a breeder that is selecting for the traits you most want to see, you’ll be further ahead in your breeding program because you bought animals from that particular breeder. There may be other traits that a particular breeder doesn’t put as much weight on as you do, so you should be willing to work with whatever other traits those may be in your breeding program or you would be happier buying breeding stock from some other breeder. This doesn’t make the breeder you didn’t buy from a ‘bad’ breeder, it just means they aren’t the best breeder for you to buy breeding stock from.

There are no perfect animals even though many breeders have an ideal example in mind that they are trying to replicate in their breeding program. The more clearly defined the goal, the more likely a breeder is to be able to achieve it. If a breeder tries to focus on too many traits at once, they are more likely to fail to achieve the end goal. Goals can change over time or the focus of a breeding program might change as certain goals are achieved and new goals come into focus. I do have the bias that goals are best achieved if they are written down, but even if they aren’t written down, they should be clear and concisely communicated if the breeder is asked about them. Breeders should be able to communicate their standards that they use to indicate when their goals have been met. This is useful for the beginning breeder in setting their goals and for those buying from an established breeder to help sort out how likely a buyer is to be pleased with what they purchase from that breeder.




Hopefully, this overview provides some pointers or good reminders about things to think about when selecting breeders and breeding stock.