Hi Everyone,
I am considering purchasing a buck this coming Saturday, and have been trying to do as much research as I can on his bloodlines, prior to purchasing. I was just on the ADGA genetics website, and it looks like the buck's sire and dam have the same sire....on the ADGAgenetics site (at the bottom), it says 6.25% inbreeding. Should I go forward with this purchase, or run the other way? Bloodlines are Little Tots Estate and Woodhaven Farms, if that makes any difference. Thanks
Replies
It is totally dependent upon the individual goat. There is a saying with line-breeding in that it creates trash or treasure. Some of the best and some of the worst goats have been produced with line-breeding. Sometimes the best and worst are siblings! One of the best NDs of all time had a sister who had an extra teat and was sold without papers.
One thing I will say definitively is that personally I would not buy a line-bred goat that was bred by someone who had been working with the genetics for anything less than ten years. Some people line-breed simply because they don't want to buy another buck, which is NOT the right reason to do it. Line breeding should only be done because you have a truly exceptional goat, and you WANT to concentrate their awesome genes to get more awesomeness. Is that common buck really excellent? How many daughters has he sired who are exceptional milkers? Are those daughters on milk test?
Line-breeding also should not be done by people who are new to goats. Once you've owned multiple generations of goats, you have a pretty good idea of the good, the bad, and the ugly that's hiding in their genes, so you're less likely to make a bad mistake, although it does still happen. If Woodhaven or Little Tots did a line-breeding with goats that have been on their farms for generations, they know what they're doing better than someone who bought a few goats from them and then crossed them because they simply didn't want to buy another buck.