You bought an ADGA registered goat, do you need an ADGA membership?
Registering goats with ADGA is relatively simple, but can seem daunting. I think getting an ADGA membership is the way to go. I give a broad overview of how it works here and why you might want to do it that way.
The inspriation behind this post is that I sold a few does in milk to someone who has since become a friend. They originally just wanted them for milk, but wanted papered so their kids could show. They were asking me what they should do regarding the papers and regarding the buck I had let them use for breeding. I gave a broad overview of the steps, but figured writing it out might benefit them and others.
This instructions are specifically the pieces to transferring an American Dairy Goat Association (ADGA) registered goat. There are other registers out there and for the most part I won’t get into them here.
Diji Bryedal Lace aka Lacey our first registered goat
Why you should transfer the goat
You don’t need a ADGA membership to transfer a goat to your name. Though I think in most cases you probably want one. Even if you didn’t care if the goat has papers right now you at least want to transfer it into your name. Goats live a long life and you might want to sell the goat at some point. Papered animals can be helpful in that case.
Why should you get a ADGA membership?
Generally if you are going to do a few transaction a year the cost savings is worth the membership. An example exception might be if you bought a stock to cross to create and were mini goats which in turn you were registering with the Miniature Dairy Goat Association or The Miniature Goat Registry. I still believe you should transfer the ADGA registration just in case you want to sell the goat in the future.
Weighing the Costs
Note: I believe these rates reflect 2024. There was not a schedule of rates up for 2024 so I went by announced changes and the 2023 schedule.
A new indivdual membership for 2024 is $60, renewals are $45 if you are early and $50 respectively. There are other types of memberships I’m not going to cover here, including the significantly reduced youth membership cost.
Transfers within 120 days are $8 and after are $9.50 for members it is $21.00 or $25.50 for non-members. If you are registering a doe kid you bred it is $15.00 for members or $30.00 for non-members. So you can start to see simply from transfers and breeding 2 goats the cost savings for registration starts to be worth it. Membership also allows access to all the Performance Programs at ADGA. This wasn’t important to me when I first started but it is now.
Herd Names and Tattoos
When you start with your membership you also likely want to pick a herd name which is $15.00. The herd name is the prefix at the start of your registered goat’s name for example in Floof Farm BS Katsu “Floof Farm” is my herd name.
You also will need a tattoo you can request a specific tattoo or have one assigned to you. The tattoo identifies the goats you breed to you. So my herd tattoo is “FLOF”, so in Katsu’s example her right ear has a FLOF tattoo and her left ear M8 which uniquely identifies her. Remember when picking these that ADGA has been around a long time so many options are probably taken.
In both herd name and tattoo cases shorter is better. When you name goes you only get 30 characters, so if you herd name is 28 characters you would only be able to name goats 1 character. I’ve considered if I should add “Floof” as an option for my herd name simply to gain more space to name goats instead of the 5 additional characters of " Farm" (yes spaces count too).
For tattoos shorter is better simply because you need to fit the tattoo on the animal’s ear or tail. Also tattoo stamps generally only are 4 or 5 characters, so you wouldn’t want to go further than that. I like having a tattoo that represents my herd name, but this isn’t necessary.
Okay, ready to get a membership?
You can get a membership by sending in a paper form, but if you are reading this blog post you probably want to do it online. You can find detailed instructions on how to join here and need actually do it on NG the ADGA software. Once you have the membership and it is approved you are ready to transfer your goat.
Transferring the goats
Right now you can only transfer goats by mail, so despite doing everything online up until this point you will need to mail the current papers to ADGA to transfer them to your name. Everything at the bottom of the registration should already be filled out and you’ll want to add your new member ID under “BUYER ID”.
You can submit payment with the transfer you are mailing in, but personally I prefer to put money in my account online instead. I also scan the registrations so I have a copy before mailing them.
Happy Goating!
This was intended to be a broad overview and pointer to other resources to help you get started. If I’ve missed something please Contact Me so I can update the details here to help others. I hope this helps you with registering your goats with ADGA.