# ADGA Linear Appraisal Program



## goathappy

For those of you who have been wondering what the numbers and letters mean on appraisal scores, I have started this thread to explain and help you understand what it means. Please keep in mind I've only had two sessions done, so I don't know everything and I may not be explaining things completely accurately. 

Linear Appraisal is a performance program offered by the ADGA. It is an evaluation program to help you understand what are weak and strong points in your goats, what needs to be improved overall in your herd, and its helps you to better understand conformational points in your goats. It also helps you to determine whether or not the bucks you are using in your herd are improving daughters over dams, or setting your breeding program behind. It is an invaluable program.

Most commonly, you will see appraisal scores on websites like this: 1-05 VG 88 VVEV. Here is the breakdown of what this means:

1-05 means the animal was 1 year, 5 months of age at the time of appraisal
VG means the animal scored in the Very Good category.
88 is the final score they received
The first letter is for General Appearance
The second letter is for Dairy Character
The third letter is for Body Capacity
And the fourth letter is for Mammary(this is excluded, of course, on bucks scores)

When figuring a score, General Appearance is 35% of the score, Dairy Character 20%, Body Capacity 10% and Mammary 35%. On bucks and youngstock, GA is 55% of the score, DC 30%, and BC 15%.

For the letters:
E = Excellent
V = Very Good
+ = Good Plus
A = Acceptable
F = Fair
P = Poor

For the final number scores, 90 and above get an Excellent rating, 85-89 gets Very Good, 80-84 gets Good Plus, 70-79 gets Acceptable, 60-69 gets Fair, and 59 and below gets a Poor rating.

The ideal goat is a score of 100, but there is no such thing as the perfect goat. The highest score an animal can get is 94, and if they receive that score they have to go before a committee formed by the ADGA to prove that that animal really deserves a score of 94. The highest score a FF can get is 89.

Another thing to know is how the scores work for each of the individual traits, below is a graph of Gertie's yearling score, with all of her traits listed and the scores she got on them.










Ideally, you want to get at least a 25 on your traits, and at least a + on the structural traits. I'm not positive, but I think that 35 is ideal.

Here is a sheet that came with my appraisal kit, this sheet is used by appraisers to help them decide how to score each trait, a list of defects is also on this sheet: http://i580.photobucket.com/albums/ss24 ... app1-1.jpg

Here is the other side of the sheet, showing by pictures, the differences between scores: http://i580.photobucket.com/albums/ss24 ... rm/app.jpg

For the final number scores, I am not positive as to how that is figured out.

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For those of you who are interesting in appraisal, please contact the ADGA early in the year(before March) and sign up for the program. It is a very valuable program and can really help you to know how your herd stands conformation wise. You can show your goats, but the judge has only so much time to tell you what is good and what is bad about your goat before he has to move onto the next class. With appraisal, since there isn't exactly a time limit, the appraiser will be very thorough in telling you the good and bad about your goat, and if you have a question you can just ask it.

And some tips on if you are doing appraisal:
-Keep the appraiser in the shade
-Have your goats clean, shaved and hooves trimmed, just like if you were going to a show
-Present your goats fast and efficiently, don't waste time dragging your goats across the yard to the appraiser, you are wasting their time and they do not like that
-Make sure your goats tattoos are clean and readable, if they need retattooed, do it a few weeks before
-Do not over udder your does, only about 12 hours of milk is necessary
-If you have a question about appraisal just ask it.

The best part about LA is that you can get an honest opinion on your goats, you don't have to take them to the fair where they are exposed to other goats, and for the cost of taking 6 goats to a fair, you can appraise a herd of 30 goats 

And if you have any questions please feel free to ask and I will try and answer the best I can


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## goathappy

And I forgot, on kids, the "E" is replaced with "Ec" which means Extremely Correct.


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## liz

Sarah, THANK YOU for all the info, seeing what those numbers and letters mean really puts the appraisal in simple terms. :hug:


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## shadycreekgoats

Thank you very much, Sarah!!! :hug: That really helped!! :greengrin:


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## AlaskaBoers

i'll have to print that out! thanks for the info


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## goathappy

You're all very welcome


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## Jenna

THANK YOU!!!!!!! This is soooooo helpful :clap:


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## RowdyKidz

Thanks! This very helpful! Thanks! :greengrin:


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## WhisperingWillowNDG

:leap: Thank You!! I've been :scratch: trying to figure out what it all means  this is great!


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