VN May 2023

Vetnews | Mei 2023 17 The farmers who advocated an improvement of the breed accepted working with the available breeding material they were familiar with. At the same time, they realised the excellent properties and features of the Boer goat and formulated a resolute breeding policy. With vision, fine collaboration and a spirit of goodwill, these people strove to breed a uniform Boer goat with excellent meat features, a high growth rate and fecundity, which would retain its hardiness and adaptability. The end product was a goat that could produce the maximum meat under veld conditions. This achievement was even more remarkable because the breeders did not use modern objective criteria. They depended on observation and judgement based on phenotype. The so-called hand-and-eye method triumphed. The road the ennobled Boer goat had to travel was even more uneven and rougher. Boer goat breeders did not benefit from a newly created breed with its specific qualities and advantages to follow. No, they had to challenge the centuries-old African goat, later called Boer goat – with all its baggage of poor conformation, being a veld destroyer, a vagrant and a type less medley. They had to convert it and clothe it in a new mantle; it was selected and developed into a “new” breed. They achieved this by breeding phenotypically from the indigenous Boer goat and by selection without using cross-breeding with another pure goat breed. This emphasises these early Boer goat breeders’ ability to select. A further important aspect is that the Boer goat farmers initially had to generate their introduction and publicity to introduce the new, improved Boer goat. The Department of Agriculture was not involved in the early development of the ennobled Boer goat and was also not involved in introducing the breed by researchers and information officers. The Boer goat breeders were on their own, but what they bred – the ennobled Boer goat – provided enough publicity. The new Boer goat addressed fellow farmers and the world. To retain a balance in the discussion of the Boer goat, we must not disparage the old Boer goat – the one from which the ennobled Boer goat was selected - to emphasise the phenomenal progress of the new product. There was indeed a mixture of colours and types, showing great variation in conformation and size. Among them, numerous well-built meat goats of different colours established a large gene pool. There would not have been a basis for selection and breeding if they had not been there. Article Eventually, "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone" (Ps 118:22). >>>18