One Fine Acre - 2023 4H Steer Project Update

[OneFineAcre]

What's this appraisal thing? What are they appraising exactly?

A linear appraisal is when you have a trained appraiser from the American Dairy Goat Association score your animals. It's a 100 point score card.
It's a program designed to evaluate the quality of the animals. According to their hand book they score "individual traits that affect structural and functional durability to take advantage of the potential for genetic improvement through selection".

This is what is looked at.

90 and above is excellent
85-89 is Very Good
80-84 is good plus

The letters after the score are General appearance, Dairy Strength, Body Capacity and Mammary.
So Zamia was my best one she got 90 VEEE
Very Good general appearance and Excellent Dairy Strenght, Body Capacity, and Mammary.

 

[mikiz]

Thanks OFA, does look rather complicated, well done on your scores though!
Do they appraise all your goats at once or do they just do the ones you ask for?

 

[OneFineAcre]

Thanks OFA, does look rather complicated, well done on your scores though!
Do they appraise all your goats at once or do they just do the ones you ask for?

You actually can't pick and choose which ones. You can exclude Jrs. and Bucks. But, you can't say you want to do one and not another.
You can stop scoring does when they are over a certian age, I think 7.
You also don't have to score any that are not in milk.

Also, if you advertise your scores, you have to advertise all of them.
So, if I put these on my website, I have to include Caspians 79 and Daisy's 80.

 

[mikiz]

That's odd, so would you get them all appraised so you know which ones to sell and keep or is it just for your records and their pedigrees or something like that?
I've never heard of them doing this in Australia, although I don't know much about the dairy goat association here anyway so they may well do it here.

 

[OneFineAcre]

That's odd, so would you get them all appraised so you know which ones to sell and keep or is it just for your records and their pedigrees or something like that?
I've never heard of them doing this in Australia, although I don't know much about the dairy goat association here anyway so they may well do it here.

They don't want you to pick and choose and just do your good animals. That's not the purpose, to just go out there and advertise, look how great my animals scored, but then not scoring or acknowledging the ones that didn't.

It is a management tool. If you do it yearly, you can gain information on what breeding combinations are doing for you.
And yes, a tool to determine which animals you should consider culling.

And, it isn't just for your records, the scores become public on ADGA's website.

It confirmed for us, some things that we thought were the case. First that Zamia is an "Excellent" animal and should be the foundation around future breeding. We have retained one of her buck kids this year.
We also thought we had some other animals that were "Very Good" we were pleasantly surprised at the number that were scored Very Good.

We have some that good, and couple that aren't that great.

We have a friend who bought milk from us last year to make soap with, and she sells soap at the farmers market. They have been working for a year to get their place ready for goats. She just wants a couple of milkers, and we are probably going to make her a deal on a few of our lower scoring ones. Maybe Daisy (who I really love), and her doe kid from this year.

 

[Hens and Roos]

thanks for sharing the information and the pictures that they use. It helps to understand what is being looked and what should be looked for.

 

[Southern by choice]

It is a great management and breeding tool.

Also a young first freshener can only score as high as an 89.
You will generally see a doe improve with age (usually a point each year).
Bucks when young usually won't score as well as when they are 3-4.

It is a very precise mathematical formula.
Therefore not subjective.

Combining Linear Appraisals with DHIR (milk tests) gives you a great idea of the goat because the numbers are there and give information that is useful when building your herd or improving the herd you have.

It is pretty cool that OFA is accomplished so much in a sort period of time!

 

[OneFineAcre]

It is a great management and breeding tool.

Also a young first freshener can only score as high as an 89.
You will generally see a doe improve with age (usually a point each year).
Bucks when young usually won't score as well as when they are 3-4.

It is a very precise mathematical formula.
Therefore not subjective.

Combining Linear Appraisals with DHIR (milk tests) gives you a great idea of the goat because the numbers are there and give information that is useful when building your herd or improving the herd you have.

It is pretty cool that OFA is accomplished so much in a sort period of time!

About the bucks, when she gave Fortunato our yearling buck that we went to great effort to get from Ohio, an 84 I think she saw the look on my face. She then told me that 84 was at the high end of what you would expect for a yearling buck.

Very happy with Clara Belle (Zamia's daughter) 87 as a first freshener.

About our accomplishments, thanks for saying that.
But the majority of it is the fact that Little Tots Estate essentially "placed" Zamia with us when we transported the Caesar Villa bucks to him, because he knew we were showing in NC. He basically said "this is the goat you want". And Coleus and Rosemary for that matter.

And buying Ginger on Craigs List for $200 was just pure dumb luck.

 

[OneFineAcre]

I'm going to see if I can make a copy of the entire report, it is pretty complicated.

 

[Mike CHS]

I like that program and can see where it would have a big impact on sale price justification. Not to mention as a buyer I would really feel good/better about buying with this kind of info.