ALL ABOUT GOATS

1    Distribution

The goat is one of the smallest domesticated  ruminants which has served mankind earlier and  longer than cattle and sheep. It is managed for the  production of milk, meat and wool, particularly in  arid, semitropical or mountainous countries. In  temperate zones, goats are kept often rather as  supplementary animals by small holders,  while commercially cows or buffaloes are  kept for milk,  cheese and meat, and sheep for wool and meat production. Nonetheless, there are more than 460 million goats worldwide presently producing more  than 4.5 million tons of milk and 1.2 million tons of  meat besides mohair, cashmere, leather  and  dung;  and more people consume milk and milk products  from goats worldwide than from any other animal.  Cheese production, e.g., from goat milk even in  France, Greece, Norway and Italy is of  economic importance. Goat herds, on the other hand low producing though, are an expression of capital assets  and wealth in Africa and Asia where they are  found in large numbers. In the United States, there  are between 2 and 4 million head; with Texas  leading in Angora, meat and bush goats; and  California leading in dairy goats.

Goats can survive on bushes, trees, desert scrub  and aromatic herbs when sheep and cattle would  starve to death. Goat herders often have neglected  a rational numerical  balance between goat  numbers and sparse vegetation. Over-grazing has  destroyed many tree and woodland areas which  was blamed then on goats rather than man, and  this has caused widespread ecological and political  concerns, erosion, desertification and even ban on  freely grazing goats in some areas. On the other  hand, goats are valued by cattle and sheepmen in  the fight against brush encroachment on millions  of acres of open rangeland. Swiss goat  breeds are the world's leaders in milk  production. Indian and Nubian derived goat  breeds are dual-purpose meat and milk producers.  Spanish and South African goats are best known  for meat producing ability. The Turkish Angora,  Asian Cashmere and the Russian Don goats are  kept for mohair and cashmere wool production. In addition, there are Pygmy goats from Western Africa of increasing interest as laboratory and pet   animals.

Goat milk casein and goat milk fat are more easily  digested than from cow milk. Goat milk is valued  for the elderly, sick, babies, children with cow milk  allergies, patients with ulcers, and even preferred  for raising orphan foals or puppies. Fat globules in  goat milk are smaller than in cow milk and remain  dispersed longer. Goat milk is higher in vitamin A,  niacin, choline and inositol than cow milk, but it is  lower in vitamin B6, B12, C and carotenoids. The shorter chain fatty acids (C6, C8, C10, C12) are  characteristically higher in goat milk than in cow  milk. Otherwise milk gross composition from goats  or cows is similar except for differences due to  breeds, climate, stage of lactation and feeds.

Breeds of goats vary from as little as 20 lb  mature female body weight and 18 inches female  withers for dwarf goats for meat production up to  250 lb and 42 inches withers height for Indian Jamnapari, Swiss Saanen, Alpine and AngloNubian for milk production. Some Jamnapari  males may be as tall as 50 inches at withers.  Angora goats weigh between 70 to 110 lb for  mature females and are approximately 25 inches  tall. Birth weights of female singles are between 3  and 9 lb; twins being often a pound lighter and  males 1/2 lb heavier. Twinning is normal in goats  with a high percentage of triplets thus  giving  several breeds an average annual litter size above 2  per doe and more than 200 reproduction rate.  Females are called doe, young are kids, males are  bucks; one speaks of buck and doe kids, and doelings, and of wethers or castrates.

2    Differentiation

Morphologically, goats may have horns of the  scimitar or corkscrew types, but many are dehorned in early age with a heated iron, caustic or later  on with a rubber band or  surgical saw. Goats may  also be hornless genetically. They can be short  haired, long haired, have curled hair, are silky or  coarse wooled. They may have wattles on the neck  and beards. Some breeds, particularly the European, have straight noses, others have convex  noses, e.g., the Jamnapari and Nubian breeds or  slightly dished noses (Swiss). Swiss and other  European breeds have erect ears, while pendulous,  drooping, large ears  characterize Indian and  Nubian goats. The American La Mancha breed has  no external ear. A ''gopher'' ear rudiment in  La Mancha is less than 1 inch long with little or no  cartilage; an ''elf'' ear is less than 2 inches long, but bucks can be registered only with gopher ears. The responsible gene for rudimentary ears is dominant,  thus sires with gopher ears will always have  gopher or elf-eared offspring, no matter what the  genotype of the dam is to which he was mated.

Goats come in almost any color, solid black,  white, red, brown, spotted, two and three colored,  blended shades, distinct facial stripes, black and  white saddles, depending on breeds.

Teeth in goats are a good guide to age. Six lower  incisors are found at birth and a set of 20 ''milk  teeth'' are complete at 4 weeks of age consisting of  the eight incisors in the front of the lower jaw, and  12 molars, three on each side in each jaw. Instead  of incisors in the upper jaw there is a hard dental  pad against which the lower incisors bite and cut.  Some goats have an undesirable inherited recessive condition of ''parrot'' (overshot upper jaw)  or ''carp'' mouth (undershot upper jaw) which does  not interfere with barn feeding conditions but  handicaps the goat severely in pasturing and  browsing, because the lower incisor teeth cannot  cut correctly against the upper dental pad. With  progressing age, the permanent teeth wear down  from the rectangular crossectional shapeand cores  to the round stem which is a further distinguishing  mark of age. Furthermore,  there are pregnancy  rings marking horns and telling age.

The digestive tract of the goat after nursing has  the typical four stomach compartments of  ruminants consisting of the rumen (paunch) (4-6  gallon), the reticulum (honeycomb) (1-2 liters), the  omasum (maniply) (1 liter), and the abomasum  (true stomach) (3.5 liters). The intestinal canal is about 100 feet long (11 liters), or 25 times the  length of a goat. The total blood volume of the goat  approximates 1/12-1/13 of bodyweight; it takes  about 14 seconds for goat blood to complete one circulation.

Among diseases, goats are not too different from  cattle and sheep in the same regions. Goats tend to  have more internal parasites than dairy cows,  especially in confined management. They tend to  have less tuberculosis, milk fever, post partum  ketosis and brucellosis than dairy cows and their  milk tends to be of lower bacteria counts than cow milk. They have more prepartum pregnancy  toxemia than dairy cows, and are known to have  laminitis, infectious arthritis, Johne's disease, listeriosis, pneumonia, coccidiosis, scours, scabies,  pediculosis, liver fluke disease and mastitis.

3   Reproduction

The skin of the goat has sebaceous and sweat  glands besides growing the hair cover, horns,  hooves and the two compartmented mammary  gland (udder). Before the first pregnancy, the  udder is underdeveloped, but with sustained  repeated gentle massaging, a small, normal milk producing gland can be stimulated in virgin does  and even in goat bucks. In contrast to sheep, the  teats of goat's udders are conveniently long and  large for hand milking.

Tails, scent and horns distinguish goats easily  from sheep and cattle. The goat tail is short, bare  underneath and usually carried upright. Major  scent glands are located around the horn base.  They function in stimulating estrus in male and  female goats, improving conception. The goat odor  is, however, a detriment to goat keeping and milk   consumption if not properly controlled. Many goat  breeds are seasonal breeders, being influenced by  the length of daylight. Artificial insemination is  commercially practiced in regions where numbers  of females make it economical. Goats are in puberty at 1/2 year of age and can be bred if of sufficient  size. Does come into estrus in 21 day cycles normally, lasting approximately 1 to 2 days.

In temperate zones, goats breed normally from  August through February. Nearer the equator,  goats come into estrus throughout the year. Thus  more than one litter per year is possible, considering the length of pregnancy of 150 days. Five days  after ovulation one or several corpus luteum form  to protect the conceptus from abortion. The goat  pregnancy is corpus luteum dependant in contrast  to cattle. If no conception occurred, the corpus  lluteum disappears and new ovulation takes place.  A buck ejaculates normally 3/4 - 1 1/2 ml of semen  with 2-3 billion spermatozoa each. The life of an  ovum after ovulation is about 8-10 hours. As the  ovum travels down the goat's oviduct, it is fertilized by semen which traveled up through the uterus.  The fertilized embryo becomes firmly attached to  the uterine walls and surrounds itself with a  nourishing placenta starting at 52 days after conception. Semen of goat bucks freezes as well as  that of bulls and may be stored for years in 1 ml  ampules or 1/2 ml straws in liquid nitrogen tanks  for artificial insemination use.

4  Origin

Wild goats or escaped feral goats are found in  many countries and islands and can be harmful to  the vegetation if numbers are left uncontrolled.

Truly wild goats are found on Creta, other Greek  islands, in Turkey, Iran, Turkmenia, Pakistan; in  the Alps, Siberia, Sudan, Caucasus; the Pyrenees,  the Himalayan, Central Asian, Russian and Tibetan mountain ranges, and prefer rocky,  precipitous mountains and cliffs. Goats can not be  herded as well with dogs as sheep; instead they  tend to disperse or face strangers and dogs headon. Relatives of true goats are the Rocky Mountain  goat, the chamois of the Alps and Carpathian, and  the muskox.

 Goats belong, scientifically, to the Bovidae family within the suborder of ruminants 

(chevrotain,  deer, elk, caribou, moose, giraffe, okapi, antelope),  who besides the other suborders of camels, swine  and hippopotamuses make up the order of eventoed hoofed animals called artiodactyla. They have  evolved 20 million years ago in the Miocene Age, 

much later than horses, donkeys, zebras, tapirs,  rhinoceroses, who make up the order of 

uneventoed hoofed animals; and the hyrax, elephants,  manatees who make up the ancient near-hoofed  animals. All these are herbivorous mammals, i.e.,  they live from plants and nurse their young with  milk from an external gland after the young is  born, having been

carried in pregnancy to term  relatively long in an internal uterus with a complex,

nourishing placenta.

Goats and sheep make up a tribe within the  Bovidae family called Caprini that include six  goat, six sheep and five related species. Goats have  a 2n chromosome set number of 60 while domestic  sheep have a 2nd set of 54; yet living hybrids of the  two genera have been reported.

The six species of  goats can be distinguished by their horn shapes:

 1. Capra aegagrus, the wild (or bezoar) goat of  Near East Asia has scimitar-shaped

horns  with a sharp anterior keel and a few knobs interrupting it.

 2. Capra ibex, the ibex of the Alps, Siberia and  Nubia has scimitar shaped horns with a flatter  front and many transverse ridges.

3. Capra falconeri, the markhor of Central Asia has sharpkeeled horns that are twisted into open or tight spirals.

4. Capra pyrenaica, the Spanish goat has outward-upward curving horns with a sharp  posterior keel.

5. Capra cylindricornis, the Dagestan tur of the  Caucasus mountains has round outward-back inward curving horns.

 6. Capra hircus, the domestic goat evolved principally from capra aegagrus, except  for  Angora, Cashmere goats, and Damascus types  who descended from capra falconeri.

5   Breeds

Domestic goat breeds are many. Swiss breeds  are distinguished in milk producing ability and  have influenced significantly milk production from  goats around the world, especially in Europe,  North America, Australia and New Zealand. A few  breeds kept mostly for meat are the South African  boer goat, the Indian beetal, black Bengal, the Latin American criollo, the US ''Spanish'' goats  and most of the small or nondescript goats. Fiber  producing goat breeds are the Angora in Turkey,  USA, South Africa; the Cashmere in Afghanistan,  Iran, Australia and China; and Don breed in  Russia.

The major breeds of US goats are:

Saanen originate from Switzerland (Saanen  Valley), are totally white, with or without horns.  The white color is dominant over other colors.  They are mostly short haired. 

The ''Appenzell'' is a  similar breed, but partially related to the Toggenburg is from Northern Switzerland, longhaired,  white and hornless. Saanen have been exported around the world as leading milk producers. An  Australian Saanen doe holds the world record milk production of 7,714 lbs in 365 days. Saanen have  been bred in Switzerland for odor free milk long  ago.

Toggenburg, brown with white facial, ear and leg  stripes, another straight nosed, horned or hornless,  mostly shorthaired, erect eared goat, as all Swiss  are, has been very popular in the USA, comes from N.E. Switzerland, but is 4 inches shorter in height  and 18 lb lighter in average than the Saanen. They  have been bred pure for over 300 years, longer than  many of our other domestic breeds of livestock. They are reliable milk producers summer and  winter, in temperate and tropical zones. Mrs. Carl  Sandburg, wife of the famous US poet had several  world record Toggenburg does on official USDA  tests.

Alpine (including French, Rock and British),  another Swiss breed (French Switzerland), horned  or hornless, shorthaired, as tall and strong as the  Saanen, with usually faded shades of white into  black, with white facial stripes on black. They are  second in milk production to Saanen and Toggenburg.

La Mancha is a new, young breed developed in  California from Spanish Murciana origin and  Swiss and Nubian crossings. They are known for excellent adaptability and good   winter production.  They are also producing fleshier kids than the  Swiss, but are not  milking as much. They have  straight noses, short hair, hornless or horns, and  no external ear due to a dominant gene. They are  more the size of Toggenburg. Their milk fat content is higher than that of the  Swiss breeds.

(Anglo)-Nubian is a breed developed in England  from native goats and crossed with Indian and  Nubian which have heavy arched ''Roman'' noses  and long, drooping, pendulous ears, spiral horns  and are shorthaired. They are leggy and as tall as  Saanen, but produce less milk, though higher milk  fat levels and are more fleshy. They are less tolerant of cold but do well in hot climates. They  ''talk'' a lot, and are in numbers the most popular  breed in USA and Canada. They have a tendency  for triplets and quadruplets. They are horned or  hornless and have many colors that may be ''Appaloosa''-like spotted.

Oberhasli, a western Swiss breed, usually solid  red or black, horned or hornless, erect ears, not as  tall as Saanen, very well adapted for high altitude  mountain grazing and long hours of marching; popular in Switzerland, but milk production is  variable. They are also called Swiss Alpine,  Chamoisie or Brienz.

Angora originated in the Near East. The long upper coat (mohair) is the valuable product in the  Angora in contrast to the Cashmere, where the fine  underwool is the valuable product. Head has a  straight or concave nose, thin, not very long; pendulous ears and twisted horns, in both sexes. It is a  small breed, usually white. The haircoat is long with undulating locks and ringlets of fine, silky  hair. The top quality fleece of purebreds may be 1-2  lbs, but slightly more in males and wethers. They  are bearded. Spring moult is natural and shearing  occurs just before. They are not very prolific and  twinning is less frequent than in other breeds.

Pygmy are dwarf, short legged goats from West  and Central Africa and the Caribbean. Their  growth rates and milk production are relatively  respectable, although low, twinning is frequent  and they are breeding all year usually. They are  adaptable to humid tropics and resistant to  trypanosoma.

Others. There is little known about the so-called  Spanish or bush goats that are kept on the open  range in the Southwest mostly. Also, a few minor  breeds exist in this country, e.g. the Sables, which  are a colored variety of the Saanen. It would be  profitable to  know more about the other at least 60  goat breeds in the world and their comparative  values under US conditions.

By           G. F. W. Haenlein;  University of Delaware, Newark

Revised by   D. L. Ace; Pennsylvania State Univeersity,
Edited and adapted to be posted: Leopoldo Costa