The Six Record Types a Dairy-Goat Program Has to Get Right
Dairy goats are not dairy cattle scaled down, and they are not meat goats with a milk pail. The record set is its own thing. A working system has to capture six categories cleanly, and connect them so the same doe shows up everywhere her data matters.
- Kidding and reproductive history. Breeding date, kidding date, kid count and sexes, dystocia notes, retained-placenta or metritis follow-up, and the link from kid back to dam and sire.
- Production records. Daily or test-day milk weights, somatic cell count (SCC), milk urea nitrogen (MUN), butterfat and protein percentages when on DHIA, and computed 305-day standardized lactations.
- Linear Appraisal. Score, classification, and date of last scoring, per the ADGA Linear Appraisal program or equivalent.
- Parasite program. FAMACHA score, fecal egg count (FEC) results, fecal egg count reduction test (FECRT) outcomes, dewormer used, and the doe-level history of all of the above.
- Disease status. CAE, CL, and Johne's test results with the lab, the panel, the date, and a private certificate binding when applicable.
- Compliance identifiers. Scrapie premises ID at the tenant level; structured tattoo placement (right ear, left ear, tail web) at the animal level; herd prefix where the breeder uses one.
Each record category is a column you can put on a spreadsheet. What a spreadsheet cannot do is connect them, the FAMACHA score on the same doe whose 305-day lactation is sitting next to her LA score, all linked back to the sire and forward to her kids.
DHIA and DHIR Imports: What Actually Works
For dairy-goat herds on official DHIA test, the platform supports CSV bulk import of test-day data via a typed endpoint. The importer auto-detects the file's column layout, lets the breeder confirm mapping, and reports per-row outcomes (matched, ambiguous match, animal not found). Mapping preferences are stored per-tenant by header name, so the next import from the same source auto-maps without re-confirming.
Imported data feeds into completed-lactations-only computations: best-305-day, peak production, butterfat and protein, and a sparkline on the public listing once a doe has two or more completed lactations. The animals-index list view surfaces a server-attested dairy chip, and the breeder profile shows a tenant-level production summary rollup on the hero, the same data, expressed at the herd level rather than per doe.
Programmatic ADGA pulls are not part of the platform as of 2026-05-29. That remains external or later-phase work. The shipping today is honest: the breeder owns the data, the platform reads it, and the listing surfaces it.
Linear Appraisal as a Buyer-Facing Signal
Linear Appraisal is a structural-evaluation system for dairy goats that scores eight to ten linear traits plus a final classification. ADGA Linear Appraisal is the most common in US dairy-goat herds; other registries publish equivalents. A serious dairy-goat program scores its top does on cycle and publishes the results because LA differentiates animals in a way that production records alone cannot.
The platform supports authoring LA results per doe, computing classification from the score, surfacing the current score as a chip on doe detail, importing back-history from CSV, and rendering a trend chart over time. The pedigree view hydrates a `latestAppraisal` field so does carry their last LA into pedigree displays.
On the public side, when the breeder turns on the per-doe visibility toggle, the public listing emits an honest `laBadge` and the marketplace listing-detail card renders a breeder-attested Linear Appraisal section. Earned-classification badges, ★M (Star Milker), +B, and "Superior Genetics", are not synthesized by the platform. Those require authoritative rule sources from the issuing registry, and per ADR 0024 the platform will not invent them.
Parasite Program: The Differentiator That Spreadsheets Miss
Parasitism is the limiting factor in most dairy-goat herds in the US southeast and a meaningful factor everywhere else. A breeder who is running a real parasite program, FAMACHA scoring every two to four weeks during worm season, fecal egg counts on the high-shedders, and a FECRT to confirm dewormer efficacy, is making decisions a buyer should be able to see.
BreederHQ captures FAMACHA, FEC, and FECRT as structured records on the canonical trait-entry foundation. The credibility chip on a public listing requires recent canonical entries, which means a breeder cannot toggle "parasite program active" without underlying data. The chip is non-fakeable in that sense.
Two surfaces are worth knowing about. Breeder profiles roll up the parasite-program data to the tenant level so a buyer can see herd-wide history. The public /breeders/:tenantSlug/parasite-program destination page exposes the same rollup with a deeper FAMACHA distribution and a recent-entries timeline. Internally, breeders get a /herd/parasite-program dashboard and a per-animal trend chart for drill-down.
Herd-Health Passport and Disease-Status Testing
CAE (Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis), CL (Caseous Lymphadenitis), and Johne's disease are the three diseases serious dairy-goat herds test for and publish status on. The platform models per-animal CAE, CL, and Johne's test history as TraitDefinition rows on the small-ruminant biosecurity panel (the same substrate used for sheep OPP, CL, and Johne's).
At the tenant level, the HerdHealthStatus model lets the breeder attest the herd-wide status with the lab, the panel, and the date, then bind a private certificate file so the data carries provenance. Public listings expose a gated breeder-attested herd-health row, and the listing detail renders the passport card with attested dates. Breeder profiles surface the same passport on the hero.
Breed-binding requirements (the CHIC-equivalent for goats) remain unshipped because no caprine registry publishes a binding CHIC-equivalent test list as of 2026-05-26. The widget substrate exists. When a registry publishes binding requirements, the surface lights up.
Scrapie Compliance: Identifiers, CVI, and Movement
US dairy-goat sales involve federal Scrapie Eradication Program compliance for breeders moving animals across premises. The platform treats scrapie compliance as first-class: a tenant-level premises ID and herd prefix, structured per-animal tattoo placement (right ear, left ear, tail web), and a HealthCertificate + TransportEvent substrate for CVI binding and movement logging.
Marketplace listings render the structured identifier rows so buyers can see premises ID, herd prefix, and tattoo placement before they inquire. Transport events snapshot the structured tattoo state at event time, so the movement log is an auditable record, not a free-text note.
Where BreederHQ Fits for Dairy-Goat Programs
BreederHQ's dairy-goat surface is one of the most-shipped goat-domain areas. The public listing surface, breeder-profile rollups, DHIA importer, saved importer mapping presets, Linear Appraisal authoring, animal-card chips, breeder-profile appraisal hero, parasite-program rollup, herd-health passport, scrapie compliance identifiers, CVI certificates, and movement logs are live. The remaining registry gap is external: there is no programmatic ADGA Genetics API pull available to automate authoritative pedigree ingestion.
For a deeper view of the goat-specific product surface, see /goats. For how the same data layer connects across the rest of the program, see Breeder Software Has a Data Problem.
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DHIA imports, Linear Appraisal, parasite-program, herd-health passport, and scrapie compliance, connected.