Intro to Cashmere Goats

A lot of people are surprised to learn that cashmere comes from a goat. Yep, it’s true – the ultra soft “fiber of kings” comes from a lowly goat. I didn’t know it either until we purchased our current home and decided to start a farm. Most of our property is mountainside and wooded, so we had to find an animal that we could raise on this nontraditional farmland. Goats seemed like a natural choice. I never imagined I would raise goats, but when I learned that they produce cashmere I was hooked.

All goats except the angora goat have 2 hair follicles; one that produces coarse guard hair and another that produces a downy undercoat. Cashmere goats have been bred to produce a lot of down that is at least 1.25” long and less than 18.5 microns in diameter.

Cashmere is not a breed of goat, but rather a type. The North American Cashmere Goat Breed Standard has been recently developed and adopted by the Eastern Cashmere Association as a measure by which to judge cashmere goats. It is an important step toward establishing a cashmere goat breed.

Cashmere goats have a variety of “looks”. Some have short guard hair and some have long guard hair. They also come in a variety of colors from white to brown and silver to black. The goat featured in the photo at the top of this blog is one of our long-haired bucks, Spotless. The photos with this post is one of our does, Desire. Desire is a short haired goat; you can see the light colored cashmere growing out under the dark guard hair. The photo with the log in the backgroud is from the fall. The other one is from last week. She has grown a lot of cashmere since the fall. I love to pet her – she is very, very soft.