HIGH-INDEXING BILLY at this year's annual Sonora Experiment Station Angora goat performance test was consigned by John Justice, left, and Dee Hadorn, Harrah, Okla. The billy was not offered for sale.

Angora Goat Breeders Gather
For Annual Field Day And Sale

By Colleen Schreiber

SONORA — Cerulean Farm, Harrah, Oklahoma, entered three out of the top four goats at this year's Angora goat performance test.

The top indexing goat was consigned by Cerulean Farm's Dee Hadorn and John Justice, but was not offered for sale.

The top-selling billy, consigned by W.F. Kroll & Son, Harper, sold for $550 to Lee Bloodworth of Sonora.

The number of goats on test is down significantly the last couple of years. A total of 58 animals from 14 cooperators and TAES completed the test. Normally only the top 30 percent of the goats are offered in the sale, but because of low test numbers, cooperators agreed to allow those bucks with an index ratio greater than 90 to be eligible for sale. Of the 26 qualifying bucks, 21 were actually offered in the sale.

Dr. Frank Craddock, San Angelo-based state sheep and goat specialist, provided an overview of the test results. Both initial and final weights were about 10 pounds heavier this year.

Average daily gain, Craddock told listeners, has remained fairly constant, somewhere around four-tenths to .45 pounds per day. Grease fleece weights, which have fluctuated some the last couple of years, averaged 14.3 pounds. Adjusted clean fleece weights averaged 10.7 pounds. Yield was up somewhat from last year but averaged just over 75 percent.

Average lock length was about the same as last year, 7.4 inches, up just a bit the last two years, Craddock said.

"We've been above six inches in staple length for the last 10 years," he noted.

For the last four years, a fleece core sample has been used to report fiber diameter. It has changed little over the last four years. This year it averaged 38.9 microns.

Med and kemp values, Craddock said, have continued to improve over the last 10 years.

"In 1990, med fibers averaged around three percent. Now we're under one percent," he noted. "Same thing with kemp. The kemp value has been consistently just over a tenth of a percent."

About a third of the goats were sifted this year.

"Back in the early 1990s it was decided that we weren't being critical enough, and in 1993 we sifted 48 percent. This year we sifted 35 percent or 28 head.

Six goats were sifted for breed character, nine for bad legs, and five for sheepy fleeces. Two goats had testicle or scrotum problems and one had a bad mouth.

"We didn’t lose any goats on final weight or fiber diameter," he noted, "and I don’t know how long it's been since that happened. We didn’t lose any on kemp or med value, either. We did lose 13 goats because they didn't reach the minimum clean fleece weight requirement of 9.2 pounds."

Just a few years ago the U.S. had in excess of two million Angora goats. Today that number is estimated to be somewhere around 350,000 head, Craddock said. Two long-time Angora goat breeders offered some insight and a positive message as to why goat producers should hang on to their Angora goats.

Jim McMullen, who ranches in Ozona but lives in San Antonio, shared his newfound perception of mohair grading. This year he used graders from England who were brought here by the Mohair Council for a couple of weeks for teaching purposes.

His clip ended up being seven percent kid hair, 17 percent yearling, 43 percent fine adult and 33 percent adult hair.

"It cost me 10 cents a pound to get it graded," McMullen told listeners. "The benefit was that I sold my kid hair for $8.90 a pound, my adult hair for $1.85. We're showing the yearling hair for $5 a pound and my fine yearling at $2.75. By spending that 10 cents a pound on grading, I was able to double my income.

"My understanding is that if you don’t grade your hair, someone is going to buy it for a price, that price being average adult or less, and then they turn around and grade it themselves," he added.

McMullen plans to grade his own hair this fall.

Few goat breeders are as excited and dedicated to raising fine-haired quality Angora goats as Robin Giles and wife Carol. The Giles family of Comfort has been in the Angora goat business since about 1890.

"When you’ve raised Angora goats for three generations, they become part of your life," Robin Giles told fellow breeders. "We wouldn’t know how to exist if we’re not taking care of the Angora goat — pulling them out of the brush, shedding them, shearing them, etc."

The ranch is located in the heart of the developing hill country between Fredericksburg and Comfort.

"The only reason we're still here is because we want to be here," he said. "Our land may be way too valuable to ranch on, but there is a lot more to life than just cashing it in, and we want to live here."

He credited his grandfather for understanding the land and what was happening to it. In the end, his grandfather had the insight to establish an Angora herd for the primary reason of controlling the brush.

"This country had been really overgrazed. Because the grass was gone and the fuel was gone, the country wasn’t burning off anymore and the brush was really coming in. I thank him every day that he realized we had a brush problem that early.

By bringing those goats in at that time," Giles continued, "he kept the brush in check, and because we have run goats continuously since that time, we've been able to control the juniper save a few odd trees. And juniper has probably been the greatest limiting factor in our country or any of the hill country."

For the last 15 to 20 years, Giles has placed emphasis on raising fine-haired goats that are thrifty and capable of surviving off the range without any additional supplementation.

"I feel like a lot of goats are overdeveloped to where they have such genetic potential to grow so much hair that they’re totally useless to a lot of commercial producers who are trying to run large numbers of goats with very little labor over large areas of land," he told listeners.

Giles spoke from personal experience.

"Whenever I tried to develop a goat that sheared a lot of pounds, that goat was more trouble then it was worth. We had to feed them all the time; they were just poor doers."

It was at that time that he made the decision to make up for lack of pounds by breeding finer-haired goats. His goats shear right at five pounds at each shearing.

"There were years when there was no difference in the price of adult and kid hair and we felt really stupid, because here we were giving up the pounds and breeding for fineness and not being paid for it," Giles said, "but something — I don’t know what, hard headedness, I guess — made me continue."

The Comfort rancher culls his nannies when they start producing adult hair.

"If she doesn’t ever shear adult hair she might just die there. If she still has kid hair on her, I’ll shear her to death," he remarked.

He uses a little bit of a different philosophy with the billies that go into the breeding herd. Each year the finest-haired billies out of the yearling kid crop are selected to go into the billy pasture. They're never drenched or fed. They're simply expected to make it on their own. It's the survival of the fittest, a test which lasts four years. Those billies that rise to the top at that time are then used in the breeding herd, but again, not until they're four years of age.

The last couple of years, Giles' hard-headedness has finally been paying off.

"Anything under $3 and I don't think it's practical to produce," he opines. "That's true of wool, too. At least now the fine hair is finding a home."

The fine adult from his spring clip sold for $4.50 a pound and his three spring kid grades, of which 80 percent came off adult nannies, brought $8.75 a pound.

Another reason Giles believes in his Angora goats is because his country is not really cow country. And goats enable him to run more animal units.

"If you don't run goats, you won't be able to run cows, because the country will brush up," he pointed out. "If we run just cattle like we have to do on some of our lease country, the best we can do is about a cow to 25 acres. In the country where we can use a combination of cattle, sheep and goats, we can get our stocking rates to about 12 acres to an animal unit, which makes us almost twice as efficient."

Glen Fisher, president of the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association, provided an update on association activities.

At their recent annual convention, members approved an association dues increase. The membership assessment is now a flat fee of $55 per year with the option of also paying 10 cents a head on breeding animals or one cent per pound on wool and mohair. Before, the fee was $35 and 1.4 cents a pound on wool or mohair. The voluntary portion of the dues will be used to support new programs that cannot be supported under the old dues structure.

Fisher also talked about the federal mohair recourse loan payment in which some $8 million was loaned out to ranchers. He said the association continues to push for a permanent loan program and/or possibly a deficiency payment to be included in the next farm bill.

This year producers will receive a small economic assistance payment on wool and mohair for 1999 production — 20 cents on wool and 40 cents a pound on mohair.

"I know that’s not a lot of money," Fisher said. "It totals out to some $11 million and it was part of a $7 billion payout program with most of it going to crops. Don't expect any money, however, until after October."

The help comes under the Market Loss Assistance Program and was approved by the U.S. House and Senate at the end of May.

ASI's wool council received $144,952 in FY 2000 from USDA's Market Access Program. The money will be used to promote U.S. wool.

Fisher also discussed the portion of the 201 trade action involving $30 million in direct payments to producers. In the first year those producers buying rams from July 21 through September 1 qualify for $100 in assistance per ram. Producers must sign up through their local FSA office.

Producers working on individual sheep improvement programs qualify for a 50 cent per head payment, and there is a 20 percent payment of a facility improvement up to a maximum of $2500.

Beginning August 1 there will be payments for qualifying feeder lambs of $3 per head and slaughter lambs at $5 per head. Fisher said there is still a lot to be decided on just how lambs will be certified. Thus far the rule is vague in that it specifies lambs that are large-framed and heavy muscling. Certification under the rule will be done by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, not FSA; FSA will make the payments.

"We have very few people who work for AMS," Fisher pointed out. "I think it will boil down to a county agent doing the certifying.

"If you are going to be selling any feeder lambs after August, you need to get the form, which is available through FSA offices. That form has to be faxed to Washington at least 48 hours prior to delivery of those lambs," he concluded.

The National Sheep Center, he noted, finally received its $20 million, and is now taking applications and will soon be putting out loans.

Jesse Lockhart, vice president of the Mohair Council of America, talked about the council's continuing efforts to market mohair carpeting. They have made several new contacts with companies overseas to test various mohair and wool blends for making carpet. The council also has its own line of mohair carpeting available for sale as well as custom made hand-knotted rugs.

Lockhart talked about the council's involvement in getting English graders here to help producers learn how to properly sort and grade their own hair. The group offered a two-day grading school at the Texas A&M Research and Extension center in San Angelo while the graders were here.

Other speakers on the program included Preston Faris, Sutton County CEA. He spoke about the importance of having functional and sound goats.

"We need good structure all the way through the body," he told goat breeders, "because that affects reproduction performance and it affects that animal's ability to survive out in the pasture. Big isn’t necessarily the answer, but structural soundness is important."

Glen Hanson, Hamilton, shared some of his experiences as a delivery driver of carcasses to the East Coast.

Joel Hamm, a consultant and producer from Big Lake, talked about the importance of low-stress livestock handling. Hamm is a protégé of Bud and Eunice Williams, who have been practicing such methods most of their lives.

Fear and force, Hamm said, only stress livestock. He told listeners that they should remember the following points when handling livestock: animals like to see you when you’re moving them; animals like to follow each other; animals need to feel that they're doing what they want to do, so set up a situation where what you want to do is what the animals want to do; animals like to go in the direction they're headed and they don't like to be pushed from behind.