Recognizing Good Dairy Type
To begin, obtain a drawing of a dairy goat and learn the names of the different parts of the animal and their comparative importance in judging. Once you become familiar with dairy type, you will be in a much better position to select an animal and know whether it is good, very good or excellent.
A dairy goat should be angular and not round, hip bones prominent, thighs thin, with considerable length of neck and long body. Any tendency to be short and thick of body, short of neck, thick in the thighs or in any way fat and meaty is against good dairyness. Meatiness is the opposite of dairyness.
The good dairy goat will be sleek and alert, not fat and sluggish. She should be straight as possible on top and especially strong in the chine and loin area. From the hip bones back to the pin bones (bones on each side of the tail) there will be some slope on nearly every animal, but the object should be to get this line as straight as possible.
The shoulder should be refined and not coarse. It should blend into the middle smoothly. The withers or top of the shoulder should be sharp and refined and not rounded as in a meat-type animal.
The middle should be long and the rib well sprung, making adequate room for roughage, plus two or more kids. The ribs should be long and far enough apart to slide one finger between the ribs. This openness of rib denotes dairy temperament in the goat as well as the dairy cow. There should be some width in the floor of the chest so the front legs
are not too close together. Width plus depth of body denotes lung capacity and constitution and is associated with strength and ruggedness.
The legs should be straight, with adequate width of bone for strength but not so wide that it appears coarse. The animal should walk easily and freely so it can forage on pasture. The hooves should be well trimmed so the feet do not become deformed. Long pasterns make the leg look crooked; they should have some angle but not be so long that
the dewclaws touch the ground. Breeding bucks, particularly, will be heavily discounted in the show ring if they are weak in the pasterns.
The skin should be smooth, thin and pliable. The hair should be reasonably fine to denote quality but this varies considerably with the breed.
The udder should show plenty of capacity and be well held up to the body by the suspensory ligament so it will not be injured by banging on stones or other objects in the pasture or around the barn. A low-slung udder is called pendulous and is undesirable. The udder should be pliable and soft, not hard and meaty. Hard bunches in the udder or teats will be discounted in judging or selection. The udder should be balanced in shape, with teats hanging the same and slightly tilted forward. The teats should be large enough to be easily milked. After milking, the udder should be collapsed and pliable like a sott leather glove.
The head should have an alert intelligent appearance, with ears and head the shape of its particular breed.
Reference: Goat Connection
