One of the key competitive goating activities I enjoy is showing. At the center of showing is the ADGA Unified Scorecard.

When I first got started showing I was just trying to keep my goat between myself and the judge. I had learned to clip from a friend and was showing dry yearlings, not worrying about clipping udders yet. At my very first show my yearling ended up 1st in a class of 30. I was excited about our placing. Though I couldn’t really tell you why she was nicer than any of the other goats in that class. Later I learned about the ADGA unified Scorecard, which is the tool used to rank goats in the show ring. According to ADGA it “is to aid in the selection of the type of dairy goat that can function efficiently over a long productive lifetime.”

The ADGA Unified Scorecard has different division of points for Senior Does, Junior Does and Bucks. All three are still on a hundred point scale, but different pieces have different importance. If you spend much time on various confirmation related goat groups you’ll see people say things like “X only accounts for X amount of points” or “Y is really important as it is Y amount of points.” They are referring to parts of the scorecard when they do that.

I am not going to go deeply into all the components in this post, it is more intended to highlight that there is a scorecard and it is important to become familiar with it. Considering the pieces of it can help you in understanding why one goat does better than an other and why you might kid one kid over another. Finally I’d like to point out one of the most important things, that for Senior Does Mammary is 35 points. They are dairy goats after all. That doesn’t mean a doe can be terrible in all the other aspects, but it does show how an amazing mammary system can make up for one of the areas that is only a few points.

I personally have not memorized the ADGA Unified Scorecard yet, I do try to keep the pieces in my mind. I suspect eventually I’ll get there. Happy Competitive Goating and see you at a show!