Kiko

Garrick and Anne Batten crossed local feral goats with Anglo-Nubian, Saanen and British Toggenburg dairy bucks, selecting for growth rate and the ability to survive New Zealand hill country. Kiko is the Maori word for flesh.

The Goatex Group exported animals to the United States in 1992. The American Kiko Goat Association formed in 1994 and acquired the original herd book in 2000, which is why every North American Kiko registry traces its animals back to AKGA stock.

What that selection produced is a large white meat goat that is notably parasite resistant, hard hooved, and able to raise kids on rough browse without drenching or trimming. Coat color varies across the breed, and both horned and polled animals occur.

The breed was selected on performance, and the American Kiko Goat Association describes aggressive foragers and aggressive breeders with exceptional maternal instincts: does bond quickly with their kids, and the kids are up and nursing within minutes of birth.

Goat Journal's breed profile calls Kikos active and alert but calm and easy-going, and says animals used to human contact are friendly, trainable and amenable. Most carry thick horns that curve outward.

Bucks behave as bucks do. Penn State Extension describes them as tending to be aggressive and giving off a strong, urine-like odor, worst in the breeding season from September to early January.

They are the usual answer where Boers struggle, which is wet country with high worm pressure and any operation trying to reduce chemical inputs.

In the United States the commonest role is maternal: a hardy, parasite-resistant doe base with strong mothering, most often run under a Boer buck for the carcass.

Minimal input is the selection criterion, so minimal input is the requirement. They were bred to survive and rear kids on pasture and browse without help, and that self-sufficiency is the product; heavy feeding buys little here.

The trade is conformation and finish. A Kiko does not carry the muscling of a Boer and will not hang as heavy or as blocky a carcass, so at a sale ring judged on appearance they place lower.

Read the papers closely. More than one registry records Kikos, purebred and percentage animals are recorded separately, and only animals of exclusively New Zealand parentage can be registered as New Zealand Kiko. Ask which registry issued the papers and what exactly they certify.

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