What is a Pygmy Goat?
By Kathy Blackett, owner of Snokist Farm Pygmy & Pygora Goats
The Pygmy Goat is an achondroplastic dwarf. It's genes are homozygous for being short and meaty. It's body is round and full, and it's legs are short.
Most of the original Pygmy Goats came from West Africa. They were carried on ships as a food source for lions and other meat eating animals being imported into other countries. Some of the left over Pygmy imports were kept by the zoos as novelties. Eventually, they made their way in the hands of private citizens who appreciated them for their uniqueness and some years later the National Pygmy Goat Association was formed to record pedigrees and keep the Pygmy Goat Bloodlines pure.
The Pygmy Goat is a multipurpose animal whose lovable personality makes it ideal as a pet. Pygmies can be used can be used for meat, although most Pygmy owners would never dream of eating their goats. The Pygmy can be used for milk and even though they are small in size, they can produce just as efficiently as goats of other larger breeds. A milking Pygmy can produce as much as a quart of milk a day, which will contain an average of 6-7% butterfat, and the taste is very sweet.
The Pygmy Goat comes in two basic color patterns. The first is called the Agouti Pattern.
The Agouti pattern can be superimposed over a basic body color of black, brown or red. The goat will have a dark mask over the face and darker markings below the knee and hock. The Agouti pattern goat will normally have a dark dorsal stripe. This pattern also requires lighter or white accents on the ears, muzzle, and around the eyes. The body color is created by the intermingling of light and dark hairs, giving it a sort of salt and pepper look. The Agouti Pattern Pygmy can range in hue from a nearly black or brown goat with a very few light hairs sprinkled throughout the coat, to a goat with an abundance of lighter hairs giving it a silver or silver-brown appearance.
The second color pattern in Pygmies is called the Caramel Pattern
The body color of a Caramel Pattern Pygmy can be white, cream, tan, gold, reddish gold, brown, and nearly every hue inbetween. The Caramel pattern requires dark leg marking below the knee and hock, same as in the Agouti, but the Caramel pattern in addition, will have a lighter vertical stripe on the front of the cannons. The facial mask on does is broken and normally appears as two vertical lines just to the inside of the eyes. Bucks normally have a solid mask. Caramel Pygmies will have a complete or partial dorsal stripe. In addition to the dorsal stripe, bucks will normally have a dark martingale over the withers. Caramels also have a dark area on the underside of the belly.
A Pygmy Goat can also be what is called a "Non-Agouti" or carry no genes for coat pattern.
The Pygmy Goat pictured above is a solid black. Blacks are registered in two different categories. When registered as "black", the goat will also have the white accented areas on the ears, muzzle, and around the eyes, same accents required in the Agouti Pattern. A goat registered as "solid black" will not have any of the light accents as mentioned above. Even though a non-patterned goat is genetically possible in the color brown, the National Pygmy Goat Association currently does not recognize this color for registration.
Can a Pygmy Goats have white spots?
The answer to this question is yes, but in a limited fashion. The Pygmy Goat Standard states that random light markings are totally acceptable if they are in the girth belt area (behind the shoulder and in front of the stifle). The white spot on the forehead is also an acceptable place for white to occur. Light patches on shoulders, chest, hindquarters or legs are faults proportional to their distractive value. In other words, you might see a Pygmy with a spot on its foot, the tip of the tail, on the chest, or all of these on the same goat. Random spots do not diqualify a Pygmy from registration, but they can be a minor fault in the show ring. Breed specific markings are alloted a total of 8 points. The number of points, if any, taken off for random markings is at the judges discretion. 1998 National Champion Buck, Whirlwind Farms No Boundaries has a small white spot in the center of his chest area, but it was not enough of a point discrimination to keep him from winning the National Championship title.
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