Arapawa

Cook's ships called twice. In 1773 he released two goats in East Bay, and on a later voyage in 1777 he gave another pair to a Maori chief. The goats took to the island: by 1839 a visitor to its whaling settlement wrote in his diary that the place swarmed with them.

They were long assumed to be Old English goats, a common British type in the 1700s. DNA work says otherwise. The Arapawa is genetically its own thing and may be distantly related to South African breeds, which fits how ships worked: livestock was taken on at the Cape of Good Hope on the way to Australia and New Zealand.

The population sat undisturbed for centuries until the 1970s, when the New Zealand Forest Service ruled the goats were damaging native forest and ordered them removed. In 1987 two island residents, Betty and Walt Rowe, set up a sanctuary with friends and volunteers and brought 40 goats back into domestication. Nearly every Arapawa alive traces to that rescue.

A small goat. The Livestock Conservancy puts does at 60 to 80 lb and bucks up to 125 lb. The coat is long, in black, brown and white in varying combinations, and many animals carry a badger stripe down the face.

They are hardy, adaptable and alert, the Conservancy's word for a breed whose ancestors were feral for two centuries. Does typically twin, kid without trouble and mother well, and the Conservancy rates the breed suitable for a novice keeper.

The Livestock Conservancy calls the Arapawa a non-aggressive breed. Handled early in life, it makes a good family dairy and meat goat, and the goats become attached to their own group and to the people who keep them, which the Conservancy says can make them a good choice for children.

The breed standard describes an alert, good-natured animal with horns on both sexes: a doe's curve back over the head, and a mature buck's sweep up, back and outward. Penn State Extension warns that horns can tangle in woven-wire fencing and badly injure a goat, so fence with that in mind.

Meat first, and some households milk them. They are good brush clearers, which is the work the island trained them for.

The deeper use is genetic. The Conservancy's notes call out the breed's unique genes, and for most keepers stewardship is the real job.

Fencing built for escape artists. The Conservancy says Arapawas squeeze through small spaces and jump, and need appropriate fencing as a result.

Shelter from the wet. They do not like to be out in very wet weather and need somewhere dry to return to.

Past that, the Conservancy describes a generally healthy, hardy breed that is good at clearing brush and weeds.

The breed is listed as Critical on The Livestock Conservancy's Conservation Priority List. As of 2011 there were roughly 150 to 200 in domestic hands in the United States, about half of the global population, with breeders also active in New Zealand and the United Kingdom; a 2018 BBC report put the worldwide count as low as 150.

The island itself is not a refuge. New Zealand's Department of Conservation still culls the feral goats annually to protect native forest, so the breed's future is the domesticated flocks.

The numbers have grown since, from a small base. The Conservancy added the breed to its list in 2004 in the Study category and raised it to Critical in 2008, after genetic testing showed a distinct population. The Arapawa Goat Breeders Association's census as of September 1, 2023 counted 295 live animals in the United States and estimated 370 more elsewhere, with 943 goats registered in the US to that date.

The Arapawa Goat Breeders Association keeps the US registry and a breeders directory. With a population this small, the pedigree is the point: ask for the registration, ask how the seller manages inbreeding, and expect to travel or wait for stock.

This is a conservation purchase more than a production one. The breed is hardy and useful, but nobody buys an Arapawa for output; you are buying a share of a gene pool with a few hundred members.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.