Breeds and species. You need to select traits important to you.

We personally select for excellent mothers. Any mother that rejects offspring needs to go. If we need other things from the line, we may or may not keep an offspring to continue the line depending on other options we have available.

We select animals that breed young and do not require assistance giving birth.

We select for vigorous offspring that are quick to their feet and go straight to the teat to nurse.

Then we select for maximum growth in offspring, which is a measurement of milk production. With the dairy goats, they are on milk test, so we also select for high butterfat percentage and we can compare milk production (quantity and quality, which includes butterfat and protein levels) more directly. We still want to see excellent growth throughout a litter. We don't want one little kid and one or two big ones and we absolutely don't want slow growth in kids even with extra milk from the doe. We’re evaluating mothering and production qualities.

We look for animals that thrive with minimal inputs. If we have two animals that are similar in other traits, but one loses a lot of weight while in milk and the other maintains her weight easily, the one that requires extra feed to maintain or can't maintain her weight while in milk goes. That may or may not be the case if a particular animal produces double the milk and needs a little extra feed to do it though because we expect it to take 3 generations under our management to get offspring that really thrive without a lot of grain if they are from a background of heavily grain fed animals. Also, it takes input to get output, so we want to keep that in perspective as we’re making selection decisions.

We sell any animal that won't graze and forage their own feed. We've had some that would stand at the fence and yell to get back to the barn for hay over eating pasture with their herd mates. They didn't stay long enough to give birth. That's a zero for us.

In appearance, we like to see animals with wide nostrils. They need to breathe to digest their food well and they need to eat well to be productive and healthy. We like to see a wide body from nose to tail, a good brisket, deep and long body cavity, well attached udder with teats that are easy for us to hang on to when milking, wide enough orifices (that's the opening the milk comes out) so we don't have to work excessively to get milk out. We like legs that are one behind the other and side by side with no turning out or bowing or turning in. Animals that move easily and live well into old age as productive animals are the ones we like to breed more of. It goes without saying that we’re not interested in keeping animals for breeding with birth defects. Animals with hoof and leg structure that allow for natural hoof wear over us needing to trim hooves are definitely meeting breeding criterion.

We’re at the point where animals that require worming need to find a home elsewhere, but we had to put that criterion on hold until our management was such that many of our animals didn't require worming. Parasite management is more related to things like nutrition and forage length than just throwing something at the animal to control worms. It took a bit to figure out what worked before we could make a distinction between animals that had the qualities we wanted and those that didn't or couldn't show them under our management. One of our most parasite resistant lines of sheep came from someone whose property flooded regularly and nearly every animal had to be wormed. The ones that didn't or needed minimal worming at their place were incredibly hardy though.

Then there's temperament. We like tractable, friendly, trainable livestock that aren't flighty or foolish.

Somewhere after that is whatever breed traits are currently popular in the breed in question. Trends change over time. A good animal that lives well in it's natural group with as natural a life as possible in captivity with as few human interventions as possible will always be an ideal kind of animal for it's species.

Those are the basics. You'll want to select the traits that are important to you. Look for breeders that are selecting for the traits you want to see because it'll get you a lot further faster in creating the herd you want.