Herd Evaluations

This June, I had the pleasure of meeting with Tom and Elaine Considine to discuss the reintroduction of a KGBA herd evaluation service for our members.

In the past, herd evaluations were done by Harvey Considine, with his wife Elaine recording the evaluations. Harvey worked closely with KGBA members for many years, developing a Kinder scorecard used by Kinder goat breeders and as a guide for those judging Kinder goats in the show ring. The herd evaluations and scorecard were invaluable in improving Kinder goats as a breed, helping to judge them fairly in the show ring, and helping individuals choose and breed goats more responsibly.

We hope to continue the tradition with Harvey's son, Tom, and really get back on track with improving our herds and ensuring that they are the high quality, dual purpose goats that we all strive for. As Harvey and Elaine's son, Tom has been involved with goats for his entire life. He has been an ADGA licensed judge for 25 years, operates a commercial goat dairy and is a member of the ADGA board of directors. Currently, Tom is a Director for District 4, and is chair of the Breed Standards Committee. He has a phenomenal reputation - not just for his knowledge of goats, but for his willingness to help goat owners succeed, and this has been no exception. He is excited to help us improve our herds, and is committed to doing anything for the KGBA.
As I said, he and his mom came to my house, and Tom evaluated my herd. I will be posting pictures of the good and the bad in the days to come, but for now, I will just say that he did a wonderful job. He took his time evaluating each goat and explaining very clearly the decisions that he made. Elaine was a great help, as she had seen more Kinders than almost anyone in the world, and she is also excited to be helping us again. Here are the specifics on what they think they can do for us:

As it becomes set, Tom will be sending me his show schedule for next summer. He has offered to travel and do herd evaluations anywhere within an hour or so from the shows that he will be judging, and will charge us only the cost of the evaluations. That cost will be around $10-15 per goat. He has also agreed to judge any shows that he can fit into his schedule for a VERY reasonable rate, and will happily do evaluations at the site of these shows after the show itself is done. That means that we can bring our entire herds to a show, spend the morning showing, get our herd evaluated in the afternoon and go home with ribbons, scorecards and a plan for herd improvement!

Because he is pretty busy, I will be the contact person for KGBA members wanting evals, or wanting to plan shows. If you are interested in doing either, just send me an email at sue@jabeck.com, and I will work with you and Tom to arrange a convenient time for evaluations. If we have enough people in one area to warrant it, he might be willing to come just to evaluate herds, but we'll have to see how much interest there is, and where the interested members are located.

I really hope that people take advantage of this opportunity. I knew that evaluations would be valuable, but had no idea just how beneficial they would be until I had the scorecards spread out on my table. Looking at them, it made it easy to decide who to keep, who to cull, and who to breed to whom. So please - contact me if you are interest in getting your herd (or just one or two goats) evaluated. Let's all work together to make our Kinders the best goats in the world!

~Sue Beck