You got to stay focused! Developing a working line of minis is rough! How do we do it? And how do we use culling as a tool to help hone in on the traits we want to see developed in our herd? If developing a new breed was easy, there wouldnt be any fun in doing it. And especially when you are working with miniatures, boy do you have your work cut out for you! Wouldnt it be nice if you could just breed that cute nigerian buck to that sweet lamancha doe and have a perfect F1 mini pop-out all the time? Darn that hybrid vigor! What is 'Hybrid-vigor' anyway? Well, that's what makes minis so amazing, and amazingly difficult all at the same time. Its like an endless source of genetic possibility. All the different ways that genetic traits can be blended, mashed-up, and combined to produce different outcomes with no real consistency... 'Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.' This is why between a pair of F1 twins, one sibling can have gopher ears, the cobby body of a nigerian, and the enormous overly productive udder that should have been put on a full-sized doe. And the other sibling can be the perfect replica of her LaMancha dam (minus size), have elf ears, but a tiny Nigerian sized udder. AND why it is critical that breeders selecting animals to produce F1 foundation animals go with the best representatives of their breeds with as few faults as possible. Because if there are any faults whatsoever-- they will be present in the offspring, and be stamped (almost permanently) on that new line. People working with developed breeds like Toggenburgs, Saanens, and Nigerians have much more consistency in those breeds. You breed a togg to a togg you will get a togg. You breed a togg with poor lateral attachments to a togg with excellent lateral attachment background you will get improvements. But if you breed that togg with poor attachments to the Nigerian with mediocre lateral attachment background... you get a mini with good attachments almost never, poor attachments more frequently, and no attachments to speak of just as often as the poor ones. Why? Because these 2 genetically different animals are mixing with all possible genetic combinations and the most recent/frequent genes are the ones that will get expressed the strongest. Chiefly ones that line up easier--like poor character traits. Which is why strong traits need to be matched up with strong traits in order to breed for strong mini dairy animals. What's worse with hybrid vigor, is that even with 2 perfect animals--you can still get a crop of poor kids. And are much more likely to get that as a result of breeding, than if you had just stuck to breeding 2 standard bred breed goats together instead. I've said it before, and I'm going to keep saying this-- Breeding minis from scratch is for experts. Or freaks who love genetics. It is hard. It is challenging. It is discouraging. And it is not in any way easy or predictable! Generating predictabilityJust because something is hard at first doesn't make it not worth doing! How can a farm make their genetics more predictable? What animal would you pick to stay and keep breeding from the two offspring mentioned above? Before we decide, we need to understand that the ideal mini is supposed to be a blend of both those before mentioned kids. A perfect balance of the two body types. A medium boned animal--not too leggy, not too beefy and cobby. With a balanced udder that should be visible 1/3 in front of the hind leg, and 1/3 behind. So, to be honest there isn't a right or wrong answer as to what F1 doe to pick. As long as neither has serious structural flaws. You could even experiment with both! But do you have a buck that could pull both does genetic expression closer to the ideal? Breeding back to a Nigerian will definitely stamp more solid Nigerian traits on the leggy doe... but will likely produce erect-eared kids. And besides, the whole goal of a mini program isn't to have an earless-Nigerian if he was bred to the gopher doe. The trick is to find an F1 or higher buck with good quality traits that lean more toward the ideal. And with that buck begin the process of developing parallel lines that you can eventually breed back to in order to line breed. Line-breeding concentrates genetics more solidly and weeds out the randomness of 'Hybrid-Vigor' much more quickly than strictly out-crossing. In this way, you can combine the good traits of both does through their offspring and improve the quality of the future generation simultaneously. Using the buck to help make slight improvements over each doe initially when they produce F2 offspring. And then using his genetics to be a carrier of sorts that helps dilute the inbreeding characteristics of the kids from each doe when you cross them together for the F3 generation. Making the ConnectionsNow that we have much more concentrated genetics on our F3 kids it's time to start thinking critically. Do we pull in another buck? What does he have to offer? Would you be happy to have a whole herd of does that look like his dam/grand dams? Does he have any relation to your herd? If so, what animal? It would double up even more on your genetics if he was close, just as long as he is bringing in good conformation and udders too. Or how about another doe with good conformation and strong udders that could help improve your line by adding another dam line to line-breed to? When breeding it is good to concentrate your genetics to get more predictable and consistent results--but we also need to cull out the traits that would be harmful if re-introduced that back into our own bloodlines. This way, we develop much more consistency, and can offer stronger genetics to other herds as well. Animals with minor faults only needing slight improvement can be offered as breeding stock. However, severe faults/deformities should never be offered as those lines weaken the breed as a whole. And that's what is really making it hard for people to advance their breeding program forward with presently. Too many low-quality animals are available and being sold as breeding stock. Doubling up on bad traits won't ever make a good dairy goat, and it hurts the community at large when good stock isn't available. So, if you can find another buck to bring in. Buy him from a breeder who also breeds for consistency, and who also line breeds. Even though that animal would then be an out-cross to your line-- the genetics will be far more stable than what you started out with to create an F1. And, with a line-bred buck there is far less chance of that 'Hybrid Vigor' (which likes to bring up the genetic past), causing 'conformational glitches' in your lines. Its safer than going with an F1 or Foundational breeding animal too, since those concentrated genetics won't be such a detriment to your breeding progress, by throwing a random genetic wrench in your gears. But before we add to the herd, we need to take away. What are the kids/animals that have the least amount of good traits? Have we had them evaluated yet? How did they score based on our own estimation? How far off were we on our herd evaluation process compared to what a trained judge or conformation clinic appraiser was able to come up with? Are we meeting breed character requirements? Are we meeting good conformation and udder goals? No--time to cull heavy, and bring in stronger more stable lines. What to cullThese are some of the reasons to cull, and what to look out for:
Culling may not be limited to just conformational or udder issues that plague all dairy goat breeds. Sometimes we need to cull for breed characteristic traits also. For Miniature LaManchas, having a cobby nigerian body, being over-height, having erect ears, or elf-ears instead of gopher may all be grounds for culling aka removing undesirable traits from your herd.
We not only want a sound functional dairy animal, in the end, we need our minis to meet the outlined standard for their breed as well. This way, the gene pool deepens with good quality stock, and makes having a real mini much more obtainable to those looking to help grow and develop the breed.
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