Start with the dam's record, not the kid's face
The single best predictor of a doeling's future is standing in the pen eating hay: her dam. Before you assess any kid, review each mother's season honestly. How is her udder attached, and are her teats placed so kids — or a milking hand or machine — can work them? Did she carry and deliver without drama, clean up well, and mother her kids attentively? What did she produce: milk volume for a dairy line, or twins raised fat for a meat or fibre herd? And what did she cost you in trouble — treatments, assisted births, mastitis, feet that needed constant attention? A beautiful doeling out of a high-maintenance dam is a promise of more of the same; an ordinary-looking doeling from your soundest, easiest doe is usually the keeper.
Structure in the kid itself
With the dam's file open, judge the kid on the points that affect a working life. Legs should be straight and set squarely, with short, strong pasterns and feet that do not toe in or out; faults here worsen with age and weight. The back should be level, the body deep and wide enough for rumen capacity, and the jaw correct — an undershot or overshot bite handicaps a grazing animal for life. On doelings, examine the developing teats: two, well separated and cleanly formed. Extra teats, split teats or a lumpy, uneven early udder are reasons to move a kid to the sale or table group, because udder faults pass on and complicate milking and suckling alike.
Growth, health and temperament
Weigh or tape the kids at intervals rather than judging by eye at weaning; the keeper is the kid who grew steadily on the herd's ordinary feed and milk, not the one who bloomed on special treatment you cannot offer a whole herd. Review each kid's health line: repeated setbacks — persistent scouring, a pneumonia episode, heavy parasite burdens when penmates stayed clean — mark an animal whose constitution you do not want more of. Temperament counts in a breeding herd you will handle for years: wild, panic-prone kids become difficult adults, though the friendliest bottle kid also needs judging hardest on structure, because affection blurs selection faster than anything.
Be ruthless with buck kids
Keep buck selection to a higher bar than doeling selection, because one buck shapes half of every kid crop he sires. Most seasons on a small farm, no home-bred buck kid needs keeping at all: buying or borrowing an unrelated, proven male brings new blood without the inbreeding risk of a son over his own sisters and dam. If you do retain one, he should come from your single best dam, be structurally the soundest kid of the season, and show the calm, manageable temperament a mature buck needs — aggression or chronic fence-testing in a youngster becomes dangerous at full size.
Record the decision and the reasons
Mark keepers clearly, separate the groups before breeding age — young bucks can work far earlier than new owners expect — and write down why each keeper was kept and why the others were not. Those notes are gold at the next kidding, when you can check whether the dams you trusted produced as promised. Keeping each doe's kidding and health record in KinsLe's Pet Passport keeps that evidence together in one packet, ready at selection time, at sale time and at the vet visit.