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The goat was one of the very first animals domesticated by humans for milk and meat. Although cattle were domesticated, they were much more readily used as draft animals.
In Ancient Greece, bulls were highly valued, but only as draft power on arable land. The goat was assigned a more honorable role as a nurse. She was even “entrusted” with feeding the supreme deity of Olympus, Zeus. The word “goatherd” did not have a contemptuous connotation back then. Goat herding was a highly respected occupation.
But the veneration of goats, as well as their uncontrolled breeding, ultimately destroyed the forests of Hellas. It is not for nothing that they now believe that the forests of Greece were eaten by goats. Moreover, the formation of the Sahara Desert is also blamed on goats. At a minimum, it is believed that goats played a significant role in the desertification of the land, eating everything that caught their eye, right down to the bark of trees and roots in the ground.
Moreover, there was no escape for vegetation from goats even on steep cliffs.
Descended from the bezoar goat, domestic goats have not lost the ability to move along vertical rock surfaces.
Why goats climb bare man-made walls, only the wall climbers themselves know. Maybe they don’t want to lose their skills if their owner kicks them out of the warm barn.But the photo proves that with a goat's climbing skills, this animal will get its food anywhere.
And a master class from goats “How to turn a forest into a desert.”
There is also an opinion that among the ancestors of the domestic goat is the horned goat.
It is not known how consistent this version is, but the horned goat is also a mountain animal. It’s just that the habitats of these two species are different and they were most likely domesticated independently of each other.
With all their “hellish” qualities, goats stand out among other domestic animals due to their high intelligence, which they usually use to their advantage, and cheerful disposition. They are very similar in habits to cats. They become attached to a person, learn easily, but do not clearly show either one or the other until they are caught doing another mischief.
Since domestication, many different breeds of goats of any type have been bred, from dairy to wool. The oldest and, perhaps, the ancestor of all other long-haired goat breeds is the Angora goat, which received its name from the distorted ancient name of today's capital of Turkey: Ankara.
History of the Angora breed
The exact place and time of occurrence of the mutation that led to the appearance of a long-haired goat with thin, shiny hair is unknown. Presumably this is Central Anatolia: a region of Turkey centered on Ankara. The capital of Turkey, Ankara, was founded in the 7th century BC. and was then known under the Greek name Angira (Ankyra), that is, “anchor”.
A significant number of conquerors in that area have changed throughout history; Angira at some point was distorted to Angora. Europeans of the 16th century found approximately this moment when they saw an amazing long-haired breed of goats in Turkey.
At the same time, two goats of this breed came to Europe as a gift to Charles V, where they received the name “Angora” after the place where they were bred. The Angora breed also has a second name: Kemel. From the Arabic “chamal” - thin. The name directly indicates the quality of the wool of the Angora goat.
In the first half of the 19th century, Angora goats were first brought to South Africa, where the production of wool, called "mohair" from the Arabic "chosen", became the leading industry. A little later, Angora goats came to North America in the state of Texas. There, breeding Angora goats has also become one of the main branches of cattle breeding.
Angora goats were brought to the USSR from the States in 1939 and bred in the Asian republics and southern regions of the Union.
Description of the Angora breed
Adult Angora goats weigh 45-50 kg and, in addition to wool, flaunt luxurious horns.
The height of goats can be up to 75 cm.
The Angora goat, with a weight of 30-35 kg and a height of up to 66 cm, cannot boast of such a luxurious decoration. Her horns are small and thin.
The Angora goat is an animal of a loose constitution with a small hook-nosed head and a thin short neck. However, the neck is still not visible under the fur. The body of the Angora goat is short. The legs are short, strong, and correctly positioned. A distinctive feature of the breed is its amber-colored hooves.
The main color of Angoras is white. But there are silver, gray, black, brown and red (disappears over time) colors.
The length of the Angora's coat reaches 20-25 cm. As it grows, the hair is matted into shiny braids, in which 80% is transitional hair, 1.8% is short hair and 17.02% is coarse hair.
The Angora's coat has an interesting sheen called luster.To the point that in the dark, the Angora fleece has a reflective effect.
Goats are shorn twice a year, receiving up to 6 kg of wool from male goats, 3.5 from queens, 3 kg from a one-year-old goat and 2 kg from a one-year-old female goat.
Grooming of Angora goats
Typically, Angora queens are not milked, using them only for wool, but if desired, from an Angora goat in 5-6 months of lactation you can get from 70 to 100 liters of milk with a fat content of 4.5%. When slaughtering logs weighing 22 kg, the slaughter yield is 50%.
Features of maintenance and feeding
The Angora goat breed has some duality in this regard: on the one hand, it is unpretentious, that is, it can easily withstand low and high temperatures, is not picky about food, and can even feed on branches of many tree species; on the other hand, the quality of wool directly depends on the quality of maintenance and feed, and this makes us talk about Angoras as a breed that is demanding to keep.
Heavy wool does not pose a big problem, since the grease is washed off when washing the wool after cutting. Much worse is coarse wool, which does not allow making high-quality mohair.
The Angora goat calmly survives in the open air, calmly enduring all natural disasters, but from drafts, temperature changes and dampness, the Angora's fur becomes dull and matted.
From a lack of vitamins, the hair may even begin to fall out.
Goats need clean water. To comply with this condition, the water is changed twice a day.
In the absence of pasture, goats are fed bean hay, corn and other protein-rich types of food.
Thus, the advantages of Angoras include:
- undemanding to feed and the ability to get by with small amounts;
- indifference to heat or cold;
- undemanding conditions of detention;
- high quality meat;
- immunity to brucellosis and tuberculosis;
- valuable wool.
Among the disadvantages of the breed are:
- weak maternal instinct;
- frequent birth of weak and sick kids;
- instability to high air humidity;
- the presence of molts, which can reduce wool yield if you are late with cutting;
- dependence of wool quality on weather conditions.
Angoras have a friendly nature and are often herded with cows, horses and sheep.
Breed Features
The peculiarities of the Angora breed include the fact that pregnant queens do not preserve the fetus at the cost of their health. If there is not enough food and the Angora loses weight, she miscarries. As a result, the Angora breed is considered low-fertility, since the average yield of Angora kids is 70%, although competent owners receive up to 150% of kids per herd. The figure is not surprising when we remember that sheep and goats often give birth to two or three young at a time.
Typically, an Angora kid is left under the uterus for up to 5-6 months. If we take him away early, he will survive but will be stunted.
The second nuance when breeding and obtaining wool from Angoras is that after shearing, the animals are very sensitive to dampness and cold for a month and a half. Therefore, at this time, owners prefer to keep them indoors, letting them out for walks on small pastures only in good weather.
Advice! When clipping the back in spring, you can leave an uncut strip of fur 10 cm wide to protect the animal from bad weather.
To a certain extent, of course. During the autumn shearing, all the wool is removed, since at this time the herd will still be in a room protected from the weather.
Reviews from Angora owners
Conclusion
Taking a close look at the Angora goat breed, we can conclude that if Angora is needed to produce wool, then they can be regarded as a rather capricious breed to keep. If the Angora goat is needed more for the soul and admiration, then it is a hardy and unpretentious breed.
