The Four Layers of a Goat Herd-Health Record
A herd-health system that actually helps a goat operation has to work at four layers at once. Each layer answers a different question.
- Disease status at the herd level. Is this herd negative for CAE? CL? Johne's? What lab, what panel, what date? Where is the certificate? This is what a buyer wants to see before they drive out for a viewing.
- Disease status at the animal level. Has this specific doe been tested? When? What was the result? This is what a vet wants to see during a pre-purchase exam.
- Active programs. Is the herd running a real parasite program (FAMACHA, FEC, FECRT)? Is CDT vaccination current? Are kidding outcomes being recorded? These are operational, not point-in-time.
- Compliance identifiers. Scrapie premises ID, herd prefix, structured tattoo placement, CVI for cross-state movement. These are regulatory, and they have to be tied to the animal and the event.
A spreadsheet can store any one of these. What it cannot do is connect them, the doe whose herd is CAE-negative, who herself was tested in March, who is on a real parasite program, and whose scrapie tattoo is on her right ear. That connection is what a buyer actually wants to verify, and it is what a herd-health system has to deliver.
CAE, CL, and Johne's: What the Data Model Looks Like
The three diseases serious US goat herds test for are CAE (Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis), CL (Caseous Lymphadenitis), and Johne's disease (Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis). The platform models each as a canonical TraitDefinition with a structured AnimalTraitEntry per test result, against the WSU WADDL small-ruminant biosecurity panel. The same substrate carries the sheep-side equivalents (OPP, CL, Johne's).
Per-animal entries capture the lab, the panel name, the sample type, the date drawn, the date resulted, the result value, and the canonical positive/negative/inconclusive interpretation. The breeder can bind a private certificate file to the entry, so the result carries provenance.
At the tenant level, the HerdHealthStatus model lets the breeder attest the herd-wide status for each disease with the lab, the panel, the date, and a notes field. The two layers are linked: a herd-status attestation that contradicts per-animal results is a discoverable inconsistency, not a hidden one.
Parasite Program as a First-Class Surface
Parasitism is the limiting factor in most US goat herds. A breeder running a real program scores FAMACHA every two to four weeks during worm season, runs fecal egg counts on the high-shedders, and runs a FECRT once a year to confirm their dewormers still work. The platform treats each of those as structured records.
FAMACHA, FEC, and FECRT entries are canonical TraitDefinitions with structured AnimalTraitEntry rows. The public listing surfaces a parasite-program rollup card when a breeder has recent canonical entries. The credibility chip is non-fakeable, it requires data underneath. Internally, breeders see a tenant-level dashboard at /herd/parasite-program with a per-animal trend chart for drill-down.
The public destination page at /breeders/:tenantSlug/parasite-program rolls up the herd-wide picture for a tenant: FAMACHA distribution, recent FEC results, FECRT outcomes, and a link back to the listing-detail surface so a buyer can pivot between herd-level and individual animal views.
Herd-Health Passport: The Buyer-Facing Artifact
The HerdHealthStatus model produces what the audit calls a herd-health passport. The breeder authors per-disease status in platform Settings, optionally binds a private certificate file, and the public listing payload emits a gated breeder-attested herd-health row. The marketplace listing-detail page renders the passport card with attested dates; the breeder profile surfaces the same passport on the hero so a buyer can see the herd posture before they even click into an individual animal.
The passport is gated on enableHealthSharing at the tenant level and per-record visibility at the animal level. Breeders control what is public. The platform does not push private testing data into the marketplace by default.
Scrapie Compliance Without the Paperwork Friction
US goat sales involve federal Scrapie Eradication Program compliance for any animal moving across premises. The platform handles the data side of compliance: 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 a buyer can see premises ID, herd prefix, and tattoo placement on the listing detail page before they inquire. The structured tattoo state is snapshotted into TransportEvent rows at event time, so the movement log is auditable rather than free-text.
The shipped scope now covers the full breeder-facing compliance path: compliance-identifiers endpoints, structured tattoo fields, marketplace identifier rows, Settings authoring for premises ID and herd prefix, CVI certificate forms, per-animal TransportEvent movement logs, tenant-level reminder preferences, and the CVI expiry reminder cron. CVI and movement records remain private by default; BreederHQ does not auto-publish regulatory paperwork to buyers.
What Is Honest, What Is Deferred
The platform's trust posture is legally locked. BreederHQ does not vet, verify, or vouch. Every herd-health surface is either (a) Stripe Identity passthrough, (b) public-registry passthrough, or (c) breeder self-attestation, nothing else. There is no "BreederHQ Verified Herd" tier, and there will not be one. That is a posture decision, not a roadmap item.
Breed-binding ChicBreedRequirement rows for goats remain unshipped because no caprine registry publishes a binding CHIC-equivalent test list as of 2026-05-26. When one publishes a binding list, the widget surface and marketplace badge chain light up. Until then, the substrate is inert by construction, not because the work is missing, but because the source of authority is missing.
Where BreederHQ Fits for Goat Herd-Health Work
The goat herd-health surface is one of the most-shipped goat-domain areas. Disease-status testing, parasite-program rollups, herd-health passport, scrapie compliance identifiers, structured tattoo placement, CVI certificates, movement logs, reminder preferences, and mobile FAMACHA capture are all live. The remaining external gap is not engineering: no caprine registry publishes a binding CHIC-equivalent breed-test list for goats today.
For the full goat-specific product surface, see /goats. For dairy-specific record-keeping, see Dairy Goat Record-Keeping Software.
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