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The goat was one of the very first animals tamed by man for the sake of milk and meat. Although cattle were tamed, they were much more willing to use them as draft animals.
In ancient Greece, bulls were very much appreciated, but only as a draft force on arable land. The goat was given a more honorable role as a nurse. She was “instructed” even to feed the supreme deity of Olympus – Zeus. The word “goatherd” then did not have a contemptuous connotation. Goat herding was a highly respected occupation.
But the veneration of goats, as well as their uncontrolled breeding, ultimately destroyed the forests of Hellas. No wonder it is now believed that the forests of Greece were eaten by goats. Moreover, the formation of the Sahara desert is also “hung” on goats. At a minimum, it is believed that goats played a significant role in the desertification of lands, eating everything that caught their eye, up to the bark of trees and roots in the ground.
Moreover, for vegetation there was no escape from goats even on sheer cliffs.
Descended from the Bezoar goat, domestic goats have not lost the ability to move on vertical rock surfaces.
Why goats climb bare man-made walls, only the 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 goat climbing skills, this animal will get its food everywhere.
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 there is also a markhorn goat.
It is not known how well-founded this version is, but the markhorn goat is also a mountain animal. It’s just that the ranges of these two species are different and they were domesticated, most likely, independently of each other.
With all the “hellish” qualities, goats stand out among other domestic animals with high intelligence, which they usually use for their own benefit, and a cheerful disposition. They are very similar in habits to cats. They become attached to a person, they are easy to learn, but they do not clearly show either one or the other until they are caught behind another Skoda.
Since the moment of domestication, many different breeds of goats of any direction, from dairy to wool, have already been bred. The oldest and, very possibly, the progenitor 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 place and time of occurrence of the mutation that led to the appearance of a long-haired goat with a thin, shiny coat is not known for certain. Presumably this is Central Anatolia: a region of Turkey, the center of which is Ankara. Ankara, the capital of Turkey, was founded in the XNUMXth century BC. and was then known by the Greek name Angira (Ankira), that is, “anchor”.
A significant number of conquerors in that area have changed throughout history, Angira at some point was distorted to Angora. Around this moment, the Europeans of the XNUMXth century found themselves when they saw an amazing long-haired goat breed 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” in the place of their breeding. 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 XNUMXth century, Angora goats were first brought to South Africa, where the production of wool, called “mohair” from the Arabic “chosen”, became the leading branch of the economy. A little later, Angora goats came to North America, Texas. There, the breeding of Angora goats also became one of the main branches of cattle breeding.
In the USSR, Angora goats were brought from the States in 1939 and bred in the Asian republics and southern regions of the Union.
Description of the Angora breed
Adult goats of the Angora breed weigh 45-50 kg and, in addition to wool, flaunt luxurious horns.
The growth of goats can be up to 75 cm.
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 coat. The body of the Angora goat is not long. The legs are short, strong, with the correct set. A sign of the breed can be called amber-colored hooves.
The main color of Angorians is white. But there are silver, gray, black, brown and red (disappears with time) colors.
The length of the Angora wool reaches 20-25 cm. With growth, the wool is strayed into shiny braids, in which 80% is occupied by transitional hair, 1,8% short awn and 17,02% coarse hair.
The wool of the Angora has an interesting sheen called “chandelier”. Up to the fact that in the dark the fleece of the Angora has a reflective effect.
Goats are sheared twice a year, receiving up to 6 kg of wool from goats, 3,5 from queens, 3 kg from a one-year-old goat and 2 kg from a one-year-old goat.
Angora goat shearing
Usually, Angora queens are not milked, using them only for wool, but if desired, from 5 to 6 liters of milk with a fat content of 70% can be obtained from an Angora goat in 100-4,5 months of lactation. When slaughtering boulders weighing 22 kg, the slaughter yield is 50%.
Features of keeping and feeding
The Angora goat breed in this respect has some duality: on the one hand, it is unpretentious, that is, it can easily withstand low and high temperatures, is not picky in food, and can even eat branches of many tree species; on the other hand, the quality of the wool directly depends on the quality of the content and feed, and this makes us talk about the Angora as a breed that is whimsical in content.
Weighted wool is not a big problem, as the grease is washed off when washing the wool after shearing. Much worse is coarse wool, which does not allow you to make 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 coat becomes dull and tangled.
From a lack of vitamins, wool can 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 walking, goats are fed with bean hay, corn and other types of food rich in proteins.
Thus, the advantages of Angorians include:
- undemanding to feed and the ability to manage with a small amount of it;
- indifference to heat or cold;
- undemanding to conditions of detention;
- high quality meat;
- immunity to brucellosis and tuberculosis;
- valuable wool.
Among the shortcomings of the breed are:
- weak maternal instinct;
- frequent birth of weak and sickly kids;
- instability to high humidity;
- the presence of lines that can reduce the yield of wool if you are late with a haircut;
- dependence of wool quality on weather conditions.
Angorkas have a friendly nature, they are often grazing with cows, horses and sheep.
Features of the breed
The peculiarities of the Angora breed include the fact that pregnant uterus does not preserve the fetus at the cost of their health. If there is little food and the Angorka loses weight, she has a miscarriage. As a result, the Angora breed is considered infertile, since the average yield of Angora kids is 70%, although competent owners receive up to 150% of kids per herd. There is nothing surprising in the figure, if we remember that sheep and goats often give birth to two or three cubs at a time.
Usually, the Angora kid is left under the uterus for up to 5-6 months. If you take it away earlier, it will survive, but will lag behind in growth.
The second nuance in breeding and obtaining wool from angora is that after shearing, animals are very sensitive to dampness and cold for a month and a half. Therefore, the owners at this time prefer to keep them indoors, letting them out for small pastures only in good weather.
Advice! During spring shearing, a 10 cm wide strip of wool can be left on the back to protect the animal from bad weather.
To a certain extent, of course. In the autumn shearing, all wool is removed, since at this time the herd will still be in a room protected from the weather.
Reviews of Angorese owners
Conclusion
With a close look at the Angora goat breed, we can conclude that if angora is needed to get wool, then they can be regarded as a rather capricious breed in content. If the Angora goat is needed more for the soul and admiration, then this is a hardy and unpretentious breed.
