Temperament: Animals that are easy to handle are desirable, so gentle handling from a young age is recommended. Height and Weight: If bred for meat, larger sizes and weight are favored. Horns are desirable as they dissipate heat during hot weather, which is important when growing a thick fleece.Ĭoloring: Solid colors and white are most desirable. Long, dense undercoat overall in midwinter. Sturdy, strong, well muscled, and well proportioned. Hardy, Dual-Purpose Goats for a Luxury Fiber From then on, North American cashmere goats were selected genetically to produce fine cashmere on good nutrition. However, many of these goats thickened their undercoats under managed conditions, suitable only for the cashgora market. When seeking suitable mates to cross the imported goats, similar quality goat wool was found on feral Spanish goats from Texas. In the late 1970s, a small number of American farmers imported cashmere goats from Australia to raise wool-yielding animals, but little interest was shown until the late 1980s.

CSIRO participants formed a growers group, the Australian Cashmere Growers Association (ACGA), which has been breeding goats for optimum production, while retaining the fertility and hardiness of the original bush goats. In 1980 Dawsons bought all cashmere produced in Australia, followed by other major textile companies: Filati Biagioli (Italy), Forte Cashmere Company (USA), and finally Australia’s own processing company, Cashmere Connections. Political difficulties made supplies unreliable, and importers sought to develop producers elsewhere. In the late 1970s, some breeders attempted to develop the breed, but progress was slow until Dawson International Plc, a major Scottish importer of cashmere, set up a demonstration farm in 1980 to encourage Australian production.Ĭashmere is mainly produced in China, as well as in Iran, Mongolia, Iran, Afghanistan, and India. However, most breeds yield negligible quantities. Cashmere is grown by most goats (except mohair goat breeds) as their winter undercoat. In 1972, the Australian Government Research body CSIRO noticed that some of the herd at Brewarrina, NSW, grew a thick down, and they studied its quality. Since 1953 bush goats have been used for meat, through hunting or rounding up for slaughter. Photo by Paul Esson/Wikimedia CC BY-SA 2.0. However, some cashmere goat imports were recorded from India and Chinese Tartary during this time. They moved up into harsh, arid country unsuitable for sheep, and eked out an existence on the impoverished land.

Many of the farmed flocks returned to a feral state.

The gold rush from 1851 until the early twentieth century encouraged farmers to abandon their herds to seek gold. William Riley was keen to develop a fiber industry, although his ideas were not adopted by local ranchers for over a century. History: In the early nineteenth century, cross-bred Angora/Cashmere goats were imported to New South Wales (NSW) to improve the fleeces of local bush goats.

Caprine cross 2.0