Before matching the focuses  to the issues, we want to discuss one thing and that is  the difference between objective opinions versus potential prejudice opinions.

• Meat Scientist - They study different animals and different breeds to analyze the benefits and issues of the meat produced related to what customers demand and nutritional value.
• University Professors - Do research, analyze and teach on subjects in the meat goat industry and considerations on how to improve the animals, how to manage them or be more profitable.
• Process Plant Owners - Process meat goats regardless of the breed and understand what the consumers of meat goat are demanding related to quality of meat, age of animals processed, weight of animal, color of the meat, amount of fat.
•  Commercial Farmers/Ranchers - Breeders that breed and raise different breeds of meat goats in a commercial environment. There focus is on producing the quality of product that is most desirable by the consumer, the least amount of management time required, that allows them to make the most profit.

• The following bulleted actives can be done by a single breeder.
  • Breeder of Boer goats looking to sell animals for maximum prices
  • Same breeder can be a judge to determine which animals will be awarded ribbons and titles that can be used in marketing for better prices
  • Same breeder can be a teacher of potential judges to teach them how to judge animals
  • Same breeder can help develop the criteria of judges training.
  • Same breeder can help develop/change the Boer standards for a Boer association.
  • Same breeder can be a director or president of the Boer association to guide or direct what and how the association does
  • Same breeder can participate in production sales or other goat business with other breeders that have benefitted from his activities in the industry

There was a two day period in July that resulted in my commitment to do more research and write about these issues and what I think has helped in causing the Boer breed to not be as hardy and productive as other meat goat breeds. We were attending a show and I came across two of the biggest does I have ever seen. I don't mean they were tall. They had to be around 300 lbs each. I think one was LISTED as a percentage and the other as a full blood. I did not see the percentage class but I watched the monster in the full blood class. The judge selected her as the class winner and in his comments he indicated she was a LITTLE  OVER CONDITIONED. Her body wiggled from one end to the other when she walked. Many years ago when a judge determined an animal of over conditioned, the animal was sent to the back of the line. That told breeders there was a consequence to bringing a fat animal to the show. At this show, the judge sent the message fat animals may move to the front of the line and there will be no consequences. The next day I started watching the DVDs from the "Profitable Meat Goats Conference". I heard from many different people with different expertise and the message I came away from was Boer goats are not competing well with the other meat goat breeds. I believe much of the reasons for that is there has been no focus on Boer goats being hardy and a productive source for producing the desired meat goat consumers were looking for and produced efficiently for the farmer. The rest of this article will discuss the features the Boer associations have focused upon that I don't think are beneficial to breeding better meat goats.

Beautiful Ennobled head is one of the most often used buzz words we hear from judges, evaluators at production sales or listed on web sites is related to the beautiful "Ennobled Head" with the roman nose and beautiful curved horns. This has been an issue for me for a long time and I have written about it earlier (Standards & Judging problems with the Head and neck). Judges and others can say that the head is just one thing they consider but the truth comes out when you analyze how often it is stated as a PLUS  in describing the quality of the animal. Many years ago, we participated in a two day show. On the first day our buck won 1st place, the judge commented on his ennobled head and signed off on his visual inspection at the end of the show. The second day our buck placed last and the judge commented that he lacked the "Ennobled Head". What he really meant was the buck's horns did not curve the way he thought they should.

Several years later I attended a field day where an ABGA director did a presentation on Boer Goats 101 that discussed the Boer standards. He started off stating that all of the features in the standards were financially justified before they were included in the standards. As the presentation started discussing the Ennobled Head, I asked what the financial justification was for the roman nose and why it is so important. He admitted there was no financial justification but it did make the head look bold and strong. I then asked what the justification was for the requirement that the horns curve back so close to the neck because many animals end up having the horns rub on the neck, eventually causing an infection and having to have the horns cut off. He admitted there was no financial justification other than when the curve of the horns complement the curve of the roman nose, it creates a beautiful, bold head. In other words everything is financially justified unless someone questions the statement.

The last point we will make is related to the desire for a large, wide head as an indicator the body will also be large. As I did some research on other meat goat breeds and other meat animal breeds, I saw several comments about problems with kidding successfully when the breed had larger heads. Bigger heads and bigger kids can result with the does having more difficulty during labor that can result in kids and the does dying. Bulldogs are bred to have big, wide heads and 90% of them are delivered by c-section because they can't be delivered naturally.

We believe that any focus on having breeding programs to produce that Ennobled head, is taking away some focus on other features that can be financially justified. You can not focus on a large number of features without diluting the focus on something else. Boers that are winning in the show rings and becoming Ennobled with some justification because of a beautiful Ennobled head, are producing genetics that go across the US with other more critical features possibly being diluted.

Several years ago, some of our friends participated in a show. When they called to tell us how things were going, they said they were amazed when a major breeder pulled in with their trailer and unloaded some "War Horses". That meant extremely large animals. This goes along with the 300 lbs does I saw at the recent shows. Big animals win. The judge at the recent show watched the 300 lb doe walking around the ring to check if she was "walking properly". She did walk correctly according to the judge but you could tell it was not a smooth, efficient walk. When animals get that big and wide, they just can not move around smoothly and efficient like meat goats would need  to if they had to live out on the range. One of the presentations on the DVDs discussed  meat goats in West Texas may require 3 acres per goat for them to gather enough nutrition. A 300 lb goat would not be able to survive in that kind of environment. Also, she could also not move fast enough if any predator showed up.

It is also more difficult for larger, heavy does to get successfully bred. If they do get bred, they are more likely to have pregnancy toxemia because they are so fat. If they get to the labor, they will have more trouble kidding because of being so big and heavy and more likely to lose one or more of the kids during labor.

One of the other presentations on the DVDs discusses the ratio of the weaning weight of kids compared to the weight of the doe. It was stated that, in general, a calf's weaning weight will be approx 50% of the cow. A 300 lb doe would have to wean 150 lbs of kids. That would be two 75 lbs kids. The kiko and Spanish does were weaning kids  60-65% of their weight compared to the 50% of the Boers. That means the breeder is having to feed more to a large doe because of the weight in order to get less meat in relation to the weight ratios. Look at the feeding recommendations on your feed sack. It generally recommends to feed 3% of the animals weight just to maintain the existing weight.  3% x 300 lbs = 9 lbs of feed a day. 3% x 150 lbs = 4.5 lbs of feed. Some of that can come from the pasture but the point is it takes much more feed, pellets or pasture, to maintain larger Boers compared to other moderate sized  meat goat breeds.

You may have noticed, as we have, how many big name Boer goats die at a very young age. Especially the bucks. There is a price to pay when breeders focus on keeping animals larger than nature would like them to be.

We have had questions about the financial justification for the wide chests ever since they started showing up in the show ring and judges started giving preference to the animals with the extra wide chests. A summary of our concerns are:

• Have breeders gone too far?

• Is there any kidding issues when you are breeding for wide chested kids?

• Does it add additional meat to the carcass?

• Does the wider body affect the ratio of useable meat weight to live body weight?

• Does that wide tracking cause any issues?

• Is there any potential issues in the shoulder blades when the legs are much farther a part?

(see the details)

Tracking

Judges seem to spend a big part to the ring time evaluating the tracking of the animals. Most of that time seems to be focused on how the legs track as they walk. I understand that some of the evaluation done while the animals are walking is to analyze the shoulders and body muscling. I believe too much emphasis is placed on what the judge thinks about how well the animal tracks. The tracking is closely tied back to the large bone. Judges will normally talk about them together. So some of the concerns I had with large bones will also apply to the requirement to track just right.

The majority of Boer genetics in the US came from only a hand full of breeders that helped bring them into the US. All of them that I can think of also participated heavily in showing their genetics at one time or another. So most of the Boers in the US are tied back to genetics that have been through the show ring and had their tracking analyzed. That is not the case with Kikos or Spanish goats. In the Tennessee Meat Goat study, the Boers had more lameness than the Kikos or Spanish goats even though the Boers came from breeding programs that had a focus on walking correctly and large bones to make them stronger.

I believe that the Boer goat only represents a small amount of goat meat consumed in the US each year. The US can't produce enough goat meat to meet the demand. Australia provides around 40% of the goat meat eaten in the US each year and most of that comes from wild goats that are just rounded up, slaughtered, frozen and shipped to the US. I am pretty sure the farmers in Australia are not checking the tracking of the wild goats. Nature has taken care of that just like most of the Kikos and Spanish goats in the US. Australia doesn't require the wild goats to have proper tracking, large bone, Ennobled heads and be big animals but they can make a profit of shipping them half way around the world and still be cheaper than most of the US goat meat.

Another concern I have goes back to a friend of ours that was heavy into showing and had a buck and doe that won national grand champions. One day while he was fitting their animals for a show, he got all excited and ran into the house to get his wife to come out and see something. First he showed his wife how an animal walked before the feet were trimmed. The animal had some cow hock in the back that caused it to not track "TRUE". Then he trimmed the hooves and this time the animal walked "TRUE". He found out he could take an animal that did not have a TRUE tracking and,  with the proper trimming, help it walk as TRUE as any animal. Do you think he told that to the judge as he was walking the animal around? Do you think any other breeders have ever discovered that? If all of those winning animals had to be put out to pasture to live and survive on their own, do you think they would continue to track TRUE? If they don't track TRUE naturally, how will their offspring track? Will they track like their parents did after being trimmed or how they track naturally?

Last year, I was watching one of our friends in the show ring. I was impressed by how good he had the animals hooves looking and that I could never get our animals hooves to look like that when I would prepare them for a show. I asked him how he got them to look so good. He said it was very simple, he trims them about every 3 weeks to keep them looking good and the animal tracking TRUE. Would you expect a breeder of a commercial herd to trim their herds feet every 3 weeks? Maybe, the commercial breeder would like genetics that did not require the hooves to be trimmed at all and that might help them track as TRUE as the breeder needs? We have a few animals that have never had their feet trimmed that we can remember. A commercial breeder doesn't have much use for animals that only walk around the pastures if they have been trimmed within the last month.

I will also discuss tracking in the Wide chest section when it is added this weekend.

An amazing think happened several years ago. Goat breeders discovered the market for show wethers for 4H-FFA projects and that resulted in a major ripple throughout the Boer goat industry and is still having an impact. Some breeders discovered that people would pay large amounts of money for show wethers that may allow their kids to win at shows. As a matter of fact, several big breeders dropped out of raising full bloods and started breeding for show wethers because they could get better prices for them compared to the full bloods. Soon we started hearing something different at production sales. "This buck would make an outstanding wether buck". "This doe would produce some outstanding show wether kids". 

Judges looked at show wethers differently than they did full bloods. People wanted the show wethers to be long and sleek. It did not make any difference if it was not a good animal for slaughter. Breeders started breeding for long slender necks to make the body look longer. They bred for a tubular body that was not as deep so the animal would look longer. Breeders started breeding does for an extreme feminine body with an extreme long thin neck. These does were to produce the show wethers that would get the high prices and eventually the extreme feminine does started selling higher. None of this had anything to do with improving the Boer breed to be more hardy and productive for commercial herds.

Then a jump occurred from shows for show wethers to the Boer shows. Judges started selecting the style of bucks and does that were producing the best show wethers. It was difficult to tell if an animal was a buck or doe sometimes because the young bucks had changed to the tubular body with long elegant necks. What is amazing with this is judges started preferring a completely different style of Boer goat to win shows. Judges take an oath to follow the Boer goat standards. The standards never changed but the style of Boer goat winning in the ring did. What good are the standards if they are not used as the basis for what is good and what is not.

The justification for a doe looking feminine was because that showed she would be more productive. If a doe that looks feminine will be productive, imagine how productive a doe would be if she looked extremely feminine? The problem is the Boer standards do not have the word "feminine" in it one time. There is nothing about feminine or femininity in the standards. What is in the standards is "a doe should not look bucky". That is an indication the animal may not be right in its dna makeup and can't decide if it is a buck or a doe. Judges fell in love with extreme feminine does but had no justification for the wins the judges were awarding to them.

We have concern with hardiness of animals with long, thin necks, especially when they get to butting each other. We don't believe those long, thin necks can be as strong as the regular meaty necks. Also, the neck has a good amount of quality meat in it and we believe breeding for long, thin necks is breeding out a source of lean meat in the carcass. No matter how many times we have asked about the financial justification for long, thin necks, we have never received a good answer.

Breeding for Shows

When we first got into raising Boer goats, we met many of the major breeders that were first gettingt the Boer goat industry growing. We listened intently to every word and asked a million questions. One clear memory is hearing several big named breeders talking about selecting does that would only have one or two kids. They did not want multiple births if they could help it. The strategy was single kids normally are larger at birth and will get all the nutrition they want from their dam. This allowed those kids to potentially compete better in those first two show classes of 0-3 months and 3-6 months. In those days, a class winner received as many points at winning a class with no competition as they did in winning with 9 other animals competing. These breeders were traveling all over the country to compete in shows where there was little to no competition. Major breeders hired other people just to take their animals around and win points so they could get Ennoblements for the kid, the dam and the sire. Those genetics are all over the US. It would be more difficult to find animals that did not have that bloodline than to find the bloodlines in your current herd. Now consider the line breeding that has occurred that brings more focus on that characteristic of only having minimum number of kids.

We constantly hear that having big, fat does can make it hard for them to get pregnant.. From the time Boers first came to the US till the current time, many major breeders have been focusing on AI and flushes to produce the offspring of their animals. Those flushed genetics are spread throughout the US in the Boer herds. Also much of the Boers in the US have been raised with plenty of grain nutrition to keep them looking in tip top shape.  Breeders focusing on winning at shows prefer to keep their animals looking outstanding and can be doing much of their breeding by AI so there is no history of how well they can breed naturally. A breeder can look at their animals pedigree and see how many Ennoblements are there. Many times those are the animals that  may have come from a history of not breeding naturally.

The second issue that we have had experience with is major breeders focusing on producing an udder that is very tightly connected to the body. This was a very specific feature the breeders were trying to get because it is goodness in the show ring. The judges like to see an udder that is well connected with little drooping. This was literally stated at Production sales about the does being sold. We bought one because it came out of big name animals from well known breeders.  We bred the doe, she had triplets and had a tight udder about the size of my fist that could only produce milk for one kid. The udder was great for looks but she could not raise multiple kids from that great looking udder. If we had not bottle fed two of the kids, they would have died. Luckily, when we bred the kids later one with different genetics, the does produced more milk. One of them kidded this year. She had triplets and was able to produce the milk for all three kids. The original doe was bred for looks and not to raise kids. In a commercial environment that means dead kids.

Summary

We have a concern for the Boer industry in the US because there is no focus on improving the breed to be better producers of goat meat efficiently. All Boer association in the US are focused on getting registration fees and sponsoring shows. That is a shame because the breeders in the US need some common voice to help keep the focus on the fact that the Boer goat is a meat goat and all efforts should be made to improve the hardiness and productivity of them. That has not been the case and studies and heresay validates the fact that the much of the boer goat breed has lost some of the features the South African breeders spent 60 years developing.

I would like to recommend that every breeder start to consider the following questions as you proceed in your goat business.

• What are the financial justifications for the major features of the boer goat breed?
• Can you really show that each feature really needs to meet the criteria that the Boer associations say they do?
• Could your animals survive and do well living, kidding and raising their kids out of the pasture with minimum attention?
• Do you really know what the meaning and value is for the "Ennoblements" listed on your animals pedigree?

I understand that many of the US breeders are not nor ever will be focused on commercial herds and sending animals to be slaughtered. That does not mean that we should not breed and raise our animals as if that was not where they will be going in the future. I have listed a link to an article that can show you how you can do performance testing of the does on your farm similar to the testing that Dr. Browning is doing at Tennessee State University. Even if you don't do the testing, it will be worth your time to read the article.

On-Farm Doe Herd Performance Testing