Dairy Goat Lactation Records and Potential for Buck Evaluation

Abstract

A study of edited dairy goat records initiated from 1968 through 1978 included lactations of 12,712 Alpine, 3,094 LaMancha, 14,005 Nubian, 5,718 Saanen, 7,534 Toggenburg, 780 experimental, 7,401 unknown breed, and 287 mixed breed does. California accounted for 39% of the records. About 80% of the kiddings were from February through May; March accounted for 27% of all kiddings. Nubians tended to kid earlier. First lactations accounted for 40% of the records and second lactations for 26%. Almost 80% of the records were from the most recent 5 yr.About 69% (3 5,322) of the records had a dry date or 305 days in milk. Of these, 20,131 were lactations of 275 or more days. For these records, milk and milk fat were greatest in lactation 4. Production of milk and fat essentially has not changed over the most recent 5 yr; average production was 878kg of milk and 3 3kg of fat.Number of herds on test has increased over years with the addition of many small herds. About 20% of the herd-years had only one buck represented. More than 55% of the 10,102 bucks had only one daughter record. Among 9,812 bucks with daughters in herd-years with daughters of other bucks, 52% appeared in only one herd-year.