Culling is the most important part of raising quality animals in the goat business. It clears out the less favorable traits and allows the breeder to improve the herd genetics. Yet, almost any goat breeder will tell you culling is hard for them to do.
So why is culling so hard if provides so much benefit. Here are a few reasons we think culling is difficult:
Culling means you have to emotionally and intellectually accept you have goats that aren't first rate in terms of their quality. To do this means, you must accept you bought goats that don't measure up and didn't get what you bargained for. If you raised the goats yourself, it means the product of you planning, hard work, and effort didn't turn out.
Most of us don't like failure. This is America! We are successful and overcome all obstacles. Well, at least we conquer some of them. Culling is viewed as failure and we DON'T like it!
It is sort of like the parents who leave the soccer game making excuses for why their kids should have won. Sure there are some poor referees and there are some teams that break the rules. Bottom line is the team lost and we can't accept losing.
Culling requires a willingness to admit you weren't as successful as you thought you were going to be. None of us want to acknowledge failure.
Yeah, nobody loves failure and it doesn't matter which country it is.
Thanks for this post!
Posted by: Nathan McIlveen | September 06, 2012 at 07:56 AM