Legends say goats are the true creators of the deserts, what do you believe? Capra hircus is commonly known as domesticated goats while capra aegagrus are undomesticated goats. Goats have been domesticated for over 9,000 years. People first domesticated the goat because the animal was a steady source of meat, milk, and fiber. The original goat was in Africa and Asia, they strive in these countries because there is a large and wide variety of plants that ruminant animals thrive on. Fun fact: historically, caprines have been blamed for the creation of some of the world’s major deserts.
The four-legged creatures have been around longer and, by comparison, have helped humans more than sheep or even cows. Archaeologists have found capra hircus bones in the proximity of homo sapiens around 10,000-11,000 years ago. This is the earliest time period associated with human contact with capra hircus. You have a garden up and running, you leave for a hunting trip with your family and you come back and you see that your garden is gone. There’s this four legged creature with two horns coming out of their head.
You see that you may be able to use this animal and if anything. It will taste good. You start to leave out food scraps and then after a long period of time, you’re able to touch the capra aegagrus. This is what went through the early humans as they just were starting to learn how to actually domesticate plants. Since the first human contact, goats have been used for many centuries for numerous uses such as; fiber, meat, milk, companionship, pack animals, alarms, and so on. Similarly to homo sapiens, capra hircus was evolving in the same time period.
While homo sapiens were branching off and going to different parts of the world, caprine were almost mirroring the technique the humans were. In the beginning for goats, there were only about 4 different breeds of goats and those breeds depended upon where the goat was located. In a 2001 study, there was proven to be over 210 different goat breeds in the world. That in itself has shown how much the caprine has evolved in 10,000 years. Caprine originally started to evolve because the conditions of their living arrangements were starting to change even more rapidly than it had been for the past couple thousand years.
Even now, caprine are still evolving, with almost every goat born, it either evolves or devolves. In the modern world, this is the way that breeders pick which goats get to be bred and who gets to sire when they reach a mature breeding age. Capra aegargus then were considered a nuisance by people, but now having capra hircus as evolved as they are, the modern world is leaning more towards actually using goats for specific purposes such as meat, fiber, and milk. What happened in the beginning of raising dairy goats for selfish purposes?
Flashback 10,000 years ago to when the early humans had figured out how to domesticate plant life and they were able to actually grow and harvest plants without having to travel a matter of miles, they would only see goats as a source of quick meat and a pest towards their newfound domesticated plant life. Through the journey of life and evolution alongside caprine, humans have found a lot more respect for the four legged creatures when they realized that they can use them for a controlled meat animal, meaning that they wouldn’t have to scavenge and hunt as much because they had a steady meat source right there.
The humans had also found out that they could drink the goat’s milk as well. After they had found out that the goats produce milk that they digest, it was then considered the woman’s’ job to take care of the goats. Right there, was the birth of raising goats specific purposes such as milk, meat, and fuel. The world of goats have split up and went mainly three different ways, meat goats (boers, kikos, spanish meat goats, etc. ), fiber goats (angora, pygora, nigora, etc. ), and dairy goats (nigerian dwarf, alpine, nubian, etc. ).
Raising dairy goats can either be a hobby or you can take it on as a full-time job. No matter if you have 2 goats or 50 goats, it’s still an everyday job, it’s not something you decide you would like to have dairy goats one day and the next you don’t want them anymore. There has been a lot of people that are buying the nigerian dwarf goat (which is only 22 inches at the shoulders) as pets for their children and the kids get bored of the goats and then the parents are stuck with the animal that they didn’t intentionally buy for themselves.
Within the three branches of goats, each group has at least two sub categories, show and commercial/production. The show goats are typically more eye appealing than the commercial goats. In the dairy world, you may have a female who has a super nice udder that produces a lot but only gives birth to one kid and you may have a female who milks a whole lot more than the other goats who also gives birth to more than two kids each kidding season but her bag is really droopy. It’s obvious that the doe with the nice bag is your show doe and that the doe that kids out more is your production doe.
In the beginning goats were seen as a pest to the humans and now they are seen as something that is able to help the human evolve as well as the goats. Everything has changed, from the breeds to the feed they eat. There are some people who still raise goats “naturally” and let the buck run with the does year round, those people tend not to milk the goats because when the bucks are in rut, when they are able to breed and they pee on themselves, the milk gets a bad taste to it and it is almost inedible.
You can also easily find many hobby farmers around the world, hobby farmers are people who took milking goats as a hobby and have up to 5 goats they milk twice daily, or you can find goat dairies which are becoming more popular in the past couple decades, goat dairies are people or companies who have invested into a building and have took milking goats as their professional job/career title. Dairy goats have been a huge success in the whole world, not just the United States, but the growing popularity of using goats for extreme modern uses has passed the mark anyone has ever put goats at.
The capra hircus came to the Americas in the 16th century by Spanish colonists. The “original” goat was actually the Spanish meat goat who was used both for meat and dairy purposes then. Up until World War II, dairy goats were not seen as agricultural commodities the way several animals such as, cattle, pigs, chickens, and sheep were. The Spanish colonists brought the goat over because they needed a steady source of meat and milk that was not as big as a cow and could easily travel to different spots by walking, boat, wagons, etc.
Also, goats are one of the quickest adapting animals compared to other livestock. Goats did not really have to adapt too much, but just getting into the system of knowing when they have to shed their winter coat and when they have to start growing their winter coat. With breeding and knowing when to breed, it was extremely easy because the doe does not go into heat until the nights get cooler (Fall) and the bucks do not go into rut until they smell does in heat.
Another way they had adapted to the new climate was the owners had to figure out how to trim the ever growing hooves of the animals because where the goats originated from, there was a lot of rocky land and the goats would naturally trim their hooves because they would constantly have to travel over steep rock faces and the constant wear on their hooves would keep the growth down to a healthy size. Within the past couple decades, the capra hircus has adapted/evolved a crazy amount.
The past couple decades in the dairy goat world have been huge. The use of artificial insemination has made a huge turn around and is used widely by breeders and dairies. The showing of dairy goats started up in the 1950’s, but was not popular until the 1980’s. The showing of goats has become a big thing with breeding because there are people who are trained to figure out what the “perfect” goat is in each of the nine recognized dairy breeds, Alpine, Lamancha, Nubian, Recorded Grade, Nigerian Dwarf, Sable, Saanen, Toggenburg, and Oberhasli.
Don’t judge a book by it’s cover is a very common saying for not judging people based on how they look, but when it comes to goats, you very much want to judge them by their look. Showing goats began because the better confirmation that a goat has, the more likely it will have an easier time kidding, being more productive on the milk stand, and not deteriorate as quickly. To show a goat you either must be in 4-H, FFA, American Goat Society, American Dairy Goat Association, or Canadian Goat Society.
If you are in either 4-H or FFA you do not need a purebred goat, but if you’re showing in any of the other organizations, you must have a purebred, papered goat. The only breed that you can actually have a papered goat and it’s not purebred is the Recorded Grade which is if it has two purebred parents. Example is a Lamancha doe bred to a Nubian buck. If you choose to become a dairy goat judge, you must go through a course of different classes and get certified as a American Dairy Goat Association judge.
The main things they judge in goats, either being a buck, a junior doe (not in milk), or a senior doe (doe in milk) is general appearance, dairy strength, body capacity, and showmanship. The senior doe can score 35 points in general appearance, 20 points in dairy strength, 10 points in body capacity, and 35 points in mammary system. The junior doe can score 55 points in general appearance, 30 points in dairy strength, and 15 points in body capacity. The buck can score 55 points in general appearance, 30 points in dairy strength, and 15 points in body capacity.
The general appearance is defined as “An attractive framework with femininity (masculinity in bucks), strength, upstandingness, length, and smoothness of blending throughout that create an impressive style and graceful walk” (ADGA. “ADGA Unified Scorecard. ” Work Study 51. 3 (2002): n. pag. American Dairy Goat Association. ADGA, 1 Jan. 2000. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. ). Dairy strength is defined as “Angularity and openness with strong yet refined and clean bone structure, showing enough substance, but with freedom from coarseness and with evidence of milking ability giving due regard to stage of lactation(of breeding season in bucks)” (ADGA. ADGA Unified Scorecard. ”
Work Study 51. 3 (2002): n. pag. American Dairy Goat Association. ADGA, 1 Jan. 2000. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. ). Body capacity is defined as “Relatively large in proportion in size, age, and period of lactation of animal (of breeding season for bucks), providing ample capacity, strength, and vigor” (ADGA. “ADGA Unified Scorecard. ” Work Study 51. 3 (2002): n. pag. American Dairy Goat Association. ADGA, 1 Jan. 2000. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. ).
Mammary system is defined as “Strongly attached elastic, well-balanced with adequate capacity, quality, ease of milking, and indicating heavy milk production over a long period of usefulness”. (ADGA. “ADGA Unified Scorecard. ” Work Study 51. 3 (2002): n. pag. American Dairy Goat Association. ADGA, 1 Jan. 2000. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. ) When showing started, it was full of good friends and good times. Like everything else, things come to an end. It now is all about who has the most money and most people just buy good goats and don’t actually work on their herd using genetics. The bigger the better is typically the term nowadays in the show world.
The people who come in crazy fancy trailers and who have the most expensive stuff are usually the people who win everything. “The shows some years ago used to be about the chance to exhibit your animal and see what others had in comparison to your herd. It was a very fun environment where everyone lended a helping hand to the new folks. It has gotten very cutthroat in some respects and “clicky” if you could say that. There are still judges out there that judge the animal based on it’s merit and then there are those that play politics and prefer to look at the individual exhibitor and not the animal. (James Oller, Harrogate, Tennessee, Artesian Valley Dairy Goats)
I interviewed around 15 dairy goat breeders who own hobby dairies and commercial dairies, whom also show and what James had said is what most of them came across when I had asked “What has the showing world turned into since you started showing? ”. Most of the breeders that are truly dedicated to their goats are more, often than not, using AI, artificial insemination, to breed their does to get new, old, dead, or hard to get genes into their herd.