An overview of condition scoring as a management tool in goats

摘要

Goat contributes a crucial role to the Indian agricultural economy. Goat husbandry frequently employs harsh management techniques, such as poor natural vegetation and crop residues, a lack of nutrients, a lack of normal preventative health care (vaccination), significant parasitic infestation, and a variety of systemic illnesses. The scoring is based on the amount of fat deposition on key body regions in goats. It's usually done in 0.5 increments on a 1 to 5 scale. It depends upon visual observations and palpation on the vertebral column, transverse process, tail head region and ribs, and assigning numerical values to each point based on the thickness of fat deposited on these points. Under conditioned flock tend to suffer from poor milk yield and reproduction efficiency, whereas over condition leads to kidding difficulties and disorders of metabolism. Condition scoring is critical since it provides a direct assessment of their general health, output and reproduction. Scoring at important times allows assessing the flock's nutritional state and provides the farmer with helpful feeding recommendations. BCS is a crucial tool for farm managers to improve production efficiency, feeding program, health, marketing, welfare and profits from livestock.