• Our Belief: We believe too much emphasis is placed on how well a goat walks related to what the judge expects. This has a strong impact on goats winning show points for Ennoblement.
• Summary of Potential Issues:

• How a hoof is trimmed can have a major impact on how a goat walks.
• Show goats are likely to have had extensive ongoing treatment of their hooves to maintain show quality look.
• Many judges place a heavy emphasis on how straight a goat walks in the show ring and that has a heavy impact on potential Ennobled labels.
• Maintaining hooves in a show quality status is very time consuming and can not be done by the typical goat breeder.

Click picture to see additional detail

We believe too much emphasis is placed on how a goat walks in the show ring and thus can heavily impact the chances of winning and getting show points for Ennoblement. We have heard judges state how a goat walks is the most important thing to them. We have seen judges spend the majority of their time comparing how the goats walk.

Our concern with this comes from two major points.

1. The hooves can be trimmed to change how a goat walks and hide potential natural problems. Many years ago, we had some friends that were seriously into showing and won at the national levels. He showed me how he could trim a goats hooves and correct the natural cow hock the goat had. Many people that participated in Show Wether shows talked about how to trim different parts of the hooves to make them stand and walk straighter. On both of these, the breeders were only hiding how the goat naturally stood or walked. Nothing changed in the DNA but it did improve the show points and ennoblements that translated into higher prices when the genetics were sold.
2. Several years ago, we noticed at a show how well the hooves looked on a Doe. I asked the owner if he could show me how he trimmed her hooves to look that good. He said he had to trim the hooves every 3-4 weeks to get and keep them growing to look like that. With enough time and experience, anyone can make their goats walk and stand better than they will naturally do.

In the real world, goat breeders cannot be trimming their herds feet every 3-4 weeks. They also can’t take the time to do customized trimming to adjust how a goat naturally walks or stands. We focus our efforts on selecting and culling for goats that require little or no hoof trimming. Who trims the hooves of deer, wild hogs, etc? Nature can take care of that and we look for goats that don’t have to have their hooves trimmed on a regular basis in order for them to be able to walk and move around the pastures.

The pictures above show some examples of the hooves of our goats. The top picture shows a hoof that is about to break off and be naturally trimmed. The middle picture shows some thicker hooves that show no sign of naturally trimming and will require us to do the work. The bottom picture is of a goat that rarely requires her hooves to be trimmed but they look perfect. We check the hoof status of goats on each monthly health check and document if they will require hoof trimming soon. That record allows us to track which animals do and do not normally require us to trim their hooves.