Savanna

The stock behind the breed is old: landrace goats kept in southern Africa since Bantu and Khoekhoe herders brought them south. The modern breed dates to 1957, when the DSU Cilliers and Sons farm in the Northern Cape put a large white buck on mixed-colored indigenous does and ran the herds on open veld, letting the country do the culling.

The Savanna Goat Society formed in South Africa in 1993. Jurgen Schultz imported live animals to the United States in 1994; they cleared quarantine in Florida, moved to Texas in 1995, and the first American sale, 32 head, came in 1998.

Does run about 132 lb, standing 19 to 25 inches at the withers. The nose is Roman over strong jaws and long-lasting teeth, and the ears are oval and pendulous.

Many does carry more than two teats, some of them blind. On a doe expected to raise multiples off range, check the udder.

Amenable and lively is the Goat Journal profile's phrase. They handle like range stock: cooperative enough, but bred to get on without you.

Does are protective mothers and kid unassisted at range, in cold and in heat, with kids up and nursing quickly.

Meat. They are heavily muscled like a Boer but were selected under harsher conditions, so they carry more of the hardiness and parasite tolerance that intensive selection for growth tends to remove.

The growth is real too: kids reach 55 to 66 lb by 100 days.

Not much, and that is the selling point. Does kid easily and raise kids on poor forage, resistance to tick-borne disease and tolerance of parasites, drought and heat are documented in the breed, and minimal healthcare intervention is the norm in the country that made them.

None of that makes them maintenance-free in wetter American country: hardy is relative, and worm country tests every goat.

Pedigree International, registering the breed since 2000, is the original US registry and keeps the largest North American database; the North American Savannah Association also maintains a herd book. Ask which registry the papers come from and whether the line is DNA-certified as South African Savanna.

The trade is numbers and price. Savannas are far less common in the United States than Boers, so stock is expensive and harder to find, and the commercial buyer at a sale barn is not paying extra for the difference. The Savanna case is lower inputs, not a higher check.

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