What is selective Breeding?
Selective breeding is simply choosing the best goats for breeding, in the expectation
that the offspring will resemble them, and therefore be better than average. If applied
to successive generations, then steady progress will be made towards the target -
the type of goat that is wanted. Individual goats may make more or less progress
towards this goal. It is even possible for an individual goat to ‘go backward’, i.e.
to be worse than its parents, but taken over all the goats on the programme, the
average will be improving
Farmer-based selection
Selection is most efficient when all the animals are kept under identical conditions,
so that the choice is ‘fair’. This is only possible if the animals are kept on a
research station, an option which is not normally economically feasible for medium
and large livestock. As well as the cost, the other problem with on-station selection
is that the conditions on a research station may not be the same as on the farms
where the new breed will eventually be kept. This is particularly true in the present
case, where disease resistance is one of the aims. For these two reasons, this programme
uses entirely farmer-based selection.
Buck selection
Because the goats will generally be ‘hand-mated’ (the male is kept separate from
the females, and they are brought together under controlled conditions) it is possible
for a single male to serve all the goats in a village. This means that the only one
male is selected out of 30 to 100 that are born. So the intensity of selection is
very high. Even if precise records are not kept, it is possible for the breeders
in a village to agree which goats produce the most milk. Among the male offspring
from the best females, a choice is made according the their healthiness, growth
rate and colour.
Doe selection
Many of the females born will be kept for breeding. This is particularly so during
the early stages of the programme, when the number of cross-bred females is low.
So the intensity of selection will be lower for the does. Once a farmer has sufficient
breeding females, all of them will be milked, but not all will necessarily give offspring
for breeding. The best of them should be mated to a dairy male, but the others could
be mated to a meat buck so that the kids fatten well. Female kids from the best doe
will be tested and compared to the existing does; those which are worse are sold.
But if one is better than one of the mature females then the least productive of
the older does is sold in its place.
A farmer whose goats all give less milk than average needs firstly to try to improve
feeding and general management, especially if the goats are also slow growing. If
this does not help, then the farmer should considering selling one or more of his
goats in order to purchase a kid from a high-producing doe.
If a farmer with one of the best does needs to sell it, the village breeder’s group
should find a way whereby this female can be retained in the village, and a less
productive goat sold in its place.
