C. P. BAILEY,One of the founders of the Angora Goat Industry in America.
Practical Angora Goat Raising
C. P. BAILEY & SONS COMPANY
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA
1905.
PREFACE.
For several years beginners in the Angora goat industrywere without text books, and even to-day thereare very few practical treatises. From our forty yearsof experience in farming Angoras, and from the personalobservations of our Dr. W. C. Bailey, while inthe interior of Asia Minor, we have tried to select theessential points in the successful management ofAngora flocks, and to present these points so thatthey may be used.
We have given a brief outline of the history of theAngora goat, but we have devoted several pages toconsideration of detail in breeding and kidding. Ithas been our aim to make this a practical text bookfor the beginner in the Angora industry, and if itproves of value to him, it has fulfilled its mission.
The Authors.
s to the origin and early history of theAngora goat little is known. It is supposedthat the Angora variety descendedfrom one of the classes of wild goats,and different writers have contended that differentgenera were the foundation of the Angora species.They have based these claims upon the characteristicsof the horns, the covering of the body, shape and sizeof the animal, and various other details. Severalagree that Capra Ægagrus is the class of goat fromwhich the Angora species has developed.
KNOWN FACTS.
Present history traces the Angora goat to thevilayet of Angora, in Asia Minor, and to the countryimmediately surrounding this vilayet. Some haveset a date over two thousand years ago, claiming thatthe Angora goat was introduced into Asia Minor atthat time, but the only authentic history is that given byTournefort, a French naturalist, employed by his government,who explored Asia Minor about two hundredand fifty years ago, and who described and picturedthe Angora goat about as he appears to-day8and by Evliya Effendi, a Turk, who wrote in 1550of the goats, and by a few other writers. That theyhave not changed more is due to the fact that theTurk is quite content as he is, and he has no ambitionto breed a different goat from what he has had for atleast