By Terry Hankins
Reprinted from Goat
Rancher, May 2007
The
Kiko breed of goat, long overshadowed by the popular and pretty Boer goat, is
starting to make serious inroads into the meat goat industry. This growth in
prominence is most notable in the Southeast and Midwest, where kids with Kiko
influence can be seen at local meat goat sales on a regular basis. Kikos,
however, still are a rare sight in the Texas Hill Country and points farther
west, although a handful of producers are using Kiko bucks on their Spanish
does to increase milk production and on Boer percentage does to tighten up
udder problems.
Back
east, producers have learned that Kikos can be raised in a hot and humid
climate a lot easier than Boer goats can. It’s not that there’s anything
fundamentally wrong with Boer goats, they just weren't made to thrive where
pastures get 50-60 inches of rain a year and there are no rocks. Boers were
bred up over the last 80 years in South Africa, where most of the country gets
less than 20 inches of rain a year, about the same rainfall as San Angelo. You
can raise Boer goats just about anywhere, but they really thrive in areas
basically west of Interstate 35. A glance at the accompanying map puts it into
stark perspective. East of Dallas, lots of rain — west of Dallas, very little
rain. This difference in climate is why the Boer and Kiko perform so
differently. The Kiko was developed from feral goats in New Zealand, where
annual rainfall can run to more than 100 inches on both the South Island and
North Island. Only the east coast of the South Island has a scarcity of rainfall.
The development of the Kiko in this temperate climate with high humidity, soggy
ground and parasites galore made it the perfect goat for places like
Mississippi, for instance, where I have been raising them since 1997.
Like
many folks I jumped on the Boer bandwagon early on. But it took me only one
kidding season to realize I had to do something drastically different. First, I
had to learn more about goats. And failing that, I had to find a goat that
could survive my management — or lack thereof. In the summer of 1996 I launched
Goat Rancher and hit the road
promoting the new publication. One of my first stops was the American Boer Goat
Association National Show, which was held in Tyler, Texas, that year. In
addition to seeing my first real Boer goats, Jacques Valley of nearby Athens,
Texas, had a booth set up promoting his Kiko goats. Jacques and his wife,
Therese, were among the first serious producers and promoters of this New
Zealand import. They were some of the first to advertise their Kikos in Goat Rancher, along with Steve and
Sylvia Tomlinson of Caston Creek Ranch in Oklahoma, Frank and Mary Dyson of
Robinson, Texas, and An Peischel of Goats Unlimited, which was located in
northern California at the time. The more that I talked to these producers, the
more interested I became in the Kiko, especially after I lost 24 Boer
percentage kids and 10 does to parasites in one spring. So I began seeking more
information on this new wonder goat.
In
the March 1997 issue of Goat Rancher,
I ran the first major article about Kikos. The cover story was an interview
with Kiko importer Graham Culliford that was written by Sylvia Tomlinson, who
by then had joined Goat Rancher as a
monthly columnist. Later that year, I visited Frank and Mary Dyson's Sunset
Place Kikos just outside of Waco, home of the famous bucks Money Maker and
Generator. In the August 1997 Goat
Rancher I published my article on Sunset Kikos — and that same year, my
cousin and I went together and bought our first Kiko buck from the Dysons, a
1-year-old son of Moneymaker, for $1,000.
Longtime
Goat Rancher readers will remember my
many articles about those first kids out of Sunboy III, or as we called him,
King Tut. We still didn’t know much about raising goats, so we just turned Tut
out with a herd of black Spanish nannies. We didn't see much action during
breeding season, but come the spring of 1998, we had little white kids running
everywhere. My cousin, Joe, and I didn’t know what to expect. We went to the
pasture with our towels and Nutri-Drench, items we had needed the year before
when little weak kids started dropping out of two dozen anemic mothers. This
year was different, however. We couldn’t catch the kids to give them the Nutri-Drench,
so we finally decided they didn’t really need it. We didn't find any weak, wet
kids, so we just sat back and enjoyed watching the healthy kids play. We tried
to catch the kids so we could eartag them and try to keep up with who was whom —
which was becoming difficult since all the does were solid black and all the
kids solid white. We couldn't even do that. We finally got the whole herd of
mommas and babies into a catch-pen. We then tagged all the kids, not knowing
who they belonged to. Then we turned them all loose, and over the next few
days, we watched and took notes as we observed which kids nursed which moms.
Those
first kids grew up with a bare minimum of attention, medication, deworming —
and feed. We didn't lose a single kid that spring. They grazed all summer and
we put out rolls of hay in the winter. There was no such thing as a sack of
goat feed in Mississippi at that time, so we put out a few molasses tubs and
range cubes made for cattle. Although I was still raising Boer goats, it was
becoming apparent that with my work and travel schedule, Kikos were going to
fit better in my ranching situation. So I started taking steps to increase my
Kiko herd and moving from an unregistered meat goat operation to a registered
breeding stock enterprise.
I
got my first two purebred Kiko does from Jo Ann and Brinson Taylor of Valdosta,
Ga., who, ironically, had first read about Kikos in the Goat Rancher. I added two more does from Jacques and Teri, another
nanny with a doe kid from the Tomlinsons, and over the years I have purchased
three does from Dr. An. These nine purebred Kiko does were so long-lived and
prolific that every buck and doe on my farm and the dozens I have sold over the
years, are descended from them. Plus I still have three of those original does
on the ranch — two of An's does (ages 5 and 8) and one of Jacques', JTV Queen,
a Klondike daughter who had her 9th birthday and a set of twins in April.
I
still have several dozen Boer percentage does on the farm. They definitely are
an example of survival of the fittest, although they do require regular
deworming. They run with the Kikos, and some of them are the most aggressive
browsers I have. It helps when a 200-pound nanny leans on a tree and the rest
of the herd is able to join in the feast.
When
we work our goats, we squeeze them into an alleyway where we can easily check
their eyelids for signs of anemia. In most cases the Kikos and Kiko percentages
score 1 to 2 on the FAMACHA chart throughout the summer. The Boer percentages
consistently score higher. This dramatic difference in parasite resistance — or
parasite tolerance — is the greatest benefit of the Kiko from an economic
standpoint. It is costly and labor-intensive to deworm on a regular basis, plus
it just creates a new generation of resistant parasites. The loss of life from
parasite infestation has cost me thousands of dollars over the years. I have
talked to many producers that have had experiences like I did trying to raise
Boers outside their natural environment. You can do it, but you have to really
work at it. If you have hardy Boers, hang onto them. I have settled on Kikos.
Through my years of experience, they have risen to the top of my list as the
easiest goats to raise, the cheapest to maintain, and these days they sell for
a whole lot more than my Boers ever did.
