$30,000 for four bales of goat fibre

Press, 24 June 1983, Page 22

$30,000 for four bales of goat fibre

Farm editor Prices for New Zealand Angora goat fibre have reached the dizzy heights of ?70 a kilogram, Mr Richard Macdonald, a marketing spokesman for the Mohair Producers’ Association, has reported.

He said four bales of mixed first-cross Angora kid fibre, called cashmere, from the Mohair producers’ latest pool, had been sold to an Australian buyer for $30,000.

The average price a kilogram was $63.60 and suppliers of first-cross Angora kid A fibre would be paid $7O a kilogram and suppliers of C fibre would get $3O a kilogram. About 200 Angora goat farmers, mostly in Canterbury, had contributed cashmere kid fibre (defined by the fibre diameter range of 15 to 19 microns) to the four bales, Mr Macdonald said.

The announcement of the high-priced sale, which had to await cashmere yieldtesting confirmation by the Australian buyer, follows up an earlier announcement that the Mohair Producers’ third pool of 15 tonnes in total had been sold for

export at an average price of $12.31 a kilogram. In the main body of the pool, the top price for purebred Angora A fibre, called mohair, was $23 a kilogram.

Mr Macdonald said the association was excited about the high-price potential of the first-cross Angora fibre, which comes in small amounts of about 200 grams a fleece for the offspring of purebred Angora bucks and feral does.

These first-cross goats are usually the first step towards development of purebred Angora flocks, but they are being increasingly used for weed and gorse control by hill and highcountry farmers in New Zealand, particularly in Canterbury. Mr Macdonald urged all owners of first-cross ango..ras to shear them early in ' the spring to maximise yields of the very valuable cashmere. The percentage of fine cashmere in goat fleeces declines as fibre diameter increases with progression towards purebred Angoras. But total fleece weight of mohair rises to Ikg an animal and more as the purebred flock is reached after the fourth or fifth back-cross to the Angora buck.

The four bales of cashmere collected by the latest pool was probably only a fraction of the total cashmere grown on firstcross goats in New Zealand each year, Mr Macdonald said.

Because hitherto farmers had been breeding towards pure mohair in their Angora flocks, first-cross goats may not have been considered worth shearing.

The latest sale confirmed that high returns from fibre were available from the start of a breeding programme to supplement the worth-while returns from weed control. For these reasons, Mr Macdonald predicted a continuing upsurge of interest in Angoras by farmers and a possible national flock of 15 million within 10 years.

He said the world demand for mohair was twice that of world supply and because it was a top-of-the-line fibre, the demand was not affected by international recession. New Zealand was uniquely placed to take advantage of the unsatisfied demand for both mohair and cashmere, he said.

Payouts from the Mohair producers’ pool will be made to growers on July 1.