The Arapawa Goat is a fascinating feral breed of dual-purpose goat which, like the Arapawa sheep, were found marooned on the offshore island of Arapawa in the Marlborough Sounds. It is a goat which has attracted in equal measure great controversy and great interest. It is a small but attractive breed in which both sexes are horned and sport elegant goaty beards. The bucks or “billies” have flattened and wide-sweeping horns, whilst the horns of the does or nannies are shorter, rounder and curve backwards over the head. Black-striped facial markings are distinctive features in the breed which come in a range of colours from black and tan, through tan, fawn, cream and red in the ‘self’ or solid colours, as well as brown and white, and white with black markings. There is a propensity for shaggy leggings to be present, especially on the hind legs, including in the females, and the coat is generally short but quite fluffy even in warmer climates.
The bucks are quite stocky but the nannies have a tendency to be quite slender and fine-boned. When allowed to browse on high-fibre forage they do develop the round-bellied look of the Olde English goat and other old dual-purpose farm breeds.

The Arapawa goat’s infamy has come from the battles which have been fought over its right to be ‘conserved’, dating back to the 1970’s when the NZ Dept of Conservation (sic) were set to eradicate these and other feral breeds from NZ’s offshore islands. The heroic story of the early struggle to save some of the goats is told in Betty Rowe’s book, Once Upon an Island, but the struggle continues to this day with updates available on the website links given below. Sadly, Betty Rowe, the goats’ main advocate on the island died in May 2008, but there is now enough international interest in the breed to continue to gain recognition and sanctuary for them. In 2007 it was shown through DNA analysis that the Arapawa goat is not related to any of the existing Spanish goats, from which many of our modern goats breeds hale, and is therefore a genetically isolated breed in its own right. Unfortunately its exact relationships were not determined as the DNA testing did not include other northern European groups of goats, including the existing descendants of the Olde English goat which it most-closely resembles.

As a breed to keep in a lifestyle context they have very appealing natures once tamed from their naturally ‘timid’ feral disposition. They form very strong bonds and attachments to their own family groups and to their keepers, and so can be very rewarding for children and animal-lovers to care for. They do need very good fencing if kept in a free-range setting, or need to be trained to be tethered, as they are amazingly agile escape-artists, with the ability to squeeze through small spaces and leap which is akin to being like a cross between a cat and a deer! They do require some kind of shelter to which they will loyally return, as they do not like to be out in very wet weather. As well as companion animals they make excellent weed-eaters as they will consume prodigious quantities of rough vegetation, and they can also be milked. They twin quite readily if well-fed.

Links to learn more about goats and the Arapawa breed:-

www.rarebreeds.co.nz/arapawagoat

www.arapawagoats.com

www.oldenglishgoats.org.uk

www.nzdgba.co.nz - New Zealand Dairy Goat Breeders Assn

Extract from the NZ Rare Breeds website:-

Without doubt the most interesting group of feral goats remaining in New Zealand is that found isolated on Arapawa Island in the Marlborough Sounds. They are a relatively small breed (smaller than modern milking breeds) and come in a variety of colours – patterns of white, fawn, brown and black being common – and they usually have distinctively patterned faces. The males have widely sweeping horns, the females shorter backward-pointing horns. It is widely believed that these goats are a surviving remnant of the Old English breed, possibly descendants of a pair released by James Cook in 1773. The colour and markings of the animals have been cited as supporting this idea. However, Cook actually recorded that the goats he released in East Bay on Arapawa Island – and which he had taken aboard at the Cape Verde Islands on the voyage out – were killed before he left the country. The fate of a second pair of goats he left on the nearby mainland in 1777 is not known – these had been collected at the Cape of Good Hope, specifically for release in New Zealand. That, however, does not obviate the possibility that the Arapawa goats are descendants of the Old English breed.

The earliest known record of goats being seen on Arapawa Island since Cook’s time was in 1839, when they were reported as being present in numbers at the Te Awaiti shore-whaling station. DNA analyses undertaken in Spain in 2007 indicated that the Arapawa goats were a genetically important breed in their own right and only distantly related to a number of other breeds investigated at the time. Unfortunately, no DNA material of the Old English goat was available for comparison.

The goats of Arapawa Island have never numbered more than a few hundred, and were always subject to intermittent hunting. In the 1970s they came under the threat of eradication when it was thought that they were seriously damaging the island’s native forest. As no acceptable proof could be produced of their antiquity or rarity – or of any immediate commercial potential – a programme of severe culling was instigated. Fortunately, the dedicated efforts of one Arapawa Island resident, Betty Rowe, ably assisted by her family and volunteer helpers, thwarted to some extent the efforts of the cull team, with the result that a small but viable population of Arapawa goats was saved. Her efforts on behalf of the goats have continued for thirtyfive years.

As well as being maintained in a reserve on the Island itself, a number of these goats have been removed over recent years and are now being bred by a few enthusiasts in various places throughout New Zealand. In 1993 a breeding group was exported to USA (see Arapawa Goats in the USA) and another to Great Britain in 2004 (Arapawa Goats Arrive in the UK). The total number of Arapawa Island goats in domestication worldwide is still less than three hundred.