With the end of August and all of the attendant Labor Day sales, along with the start of our traditional breeding season upon us we are going to take a look at the value of a buck in dollars returned to a producer. In today's market place quite probably a quality breeding buck might be the biggest bargain you could find. This statement is true regardless of your end market, whether it is show, breeding or slaughter stock production. Other than management or marketing, no other factor stands to improve your bottom line better than purchase of a top quality buck. You must though have a target market in mind when you go to select your new sire.

If you are looking for a new sire, first look at what you need in your herd in order to enhance your chances at producing what your consumers want. These selection criteria will vary slightly from which market you address but there is one common thread in the show, breeding and slaughter stock market. A cheap buck won't always provide what you need, so go to buy with an open mind and an open checkbook. The dollars you will spend are an investment in your herds' future. Quality will cost in the short run and payoff in the end, so don't hold back if you see or have the opportunity to buy the right goat.

The show/breeding market whether for wether goats or stock for breeding goat classes is so subject to the variances, vagaries, and views of individual judges it is anyone's guess as to what is the right goat today. Since showing and winning is subjective depending on one or more judges views on that particular day of the show this is a tough nut to crack. Who knows what Mr. or Mrs. Judge will want THAT day; yes style, balance, structural correctness, and muscling count heavily, but with respect to all judges, everyone has a different view of what they consider ideal. For this reason placing a dollar value on breeding bucks for this show market segment is the most difficult of all markets we could address.

Since the end market for all goats though is the slaughter market, provided they don't die on your farm, I am going to take the easy way out. This easy out being the ability to show what a breeding buck is truly worth when an objective system of valuation is used. The objective judging system mentioned is what they weigh when you run their offspring across the scales at sale time. It happens that most of the various buck performance test end before the Labor Day weekend and participating producers will have data on ADG (average daily gain) on bucks they will be offering for sale. Daily gains on these test bucks usually run anywhere from around 1 pound to 0.4 pounds per day, so we are going to look at what the value of a better gaining buck is worth in relation to dollars put back in the farmers/ranchers pocket.

Since many producers keep kids for 100 days before selling we will use the 100- day figure for ease of calculations. An attentive producer will be aware of what his kids are averaging weight wise at sale time. Based on the 100-day figure, if they gain .6 pounds per day they will be hitting the scales at 60 pounds, which is a realistic figure for many commercial operations, especially with some supplemental feeding. At the second weekly sale in July of this year goats in this weight range moved at prices up to $1.41 per pound in selected markets making them worth $84.60 each. If you are running 100 head of does and selling off a 150% kid crop for 150 head to sell, this equates a return of $12,690.00 to you, the producer, or $126.90 per production unit (doe). Not bad, but we can do better.

So let's go buck shopping for an animal that rates above average in ADG and find us one that will add .2 or 2/10 of a pound ADG to our kid crop. Why this is important and the value of that additional weight is going to become apparent.

Now when we run our kids across the scales at 100 days of age they weigh 80 pounds instead of 60 pounds like the year before. The second weekly sale of July this year this weight class brought up to $1.25 per pound or a smooth $100.00 per head. Using the same 100 does with 150% kid crop we just sold $15,000.00 worth of goat kids compared to $12,690.00 last year. Will you look at that! In just one year we jumped up $2,310.00 in gross receipts from strictly by the pound slaughter sales, and we only had to buy one goat.

If you will extrapolate this figure out to the four years of prime breeding we can expect from an average buck his true value to our herd and our pocket book is $9,240.00. This is a true objective valuation of a goat and unlike the show arena is unaffected by the variances and vagaries of one person's opinion like the show stock values are. Yet we in the meat goat industry seem ensnared in the trap of wanting to buy this year's hottest show goat bloodlines and ignore performance test results when it comes to buck selection.