Thinking outside the box: Innovative solutions for dairy goat management

Abstract For the geneticist or breeder, the individual animal is like a potential masterpiece resulting from years of attention to physical details and planned matings. The importance of culturing and nourishing this individual to not only reach its potential but to pass its selected genetics on to progeny is paramount. Thus, all the investment in genetic improvement is now at the mercy of management. Once the goats are in the herd on the farm and the responsibility of the farmer or farm manager, the expression and proliferation of the genotype will be strongly influenced by environmental factors. If maximum milk production per lactation were the real and only goal that could promise farm business and land sustainability, genetic selection would be easy. However, the real goal on farms is to have healthy goats that produce efficiently and are adapted to their environment. This places the development of the goat breeding program in the hands of farmers. To aid farmers in moving beyond the use of total milk production per goat as the feedback mechanism to farm sustainability, the integration of more appropriate progress indicators could include longevity (which, in humans, is estimated at 20% genetic and 80% environmental), the amount of milk or milk component production per body weight of goat, and the degree of involuntary culling.