How the Kiko came to America

By Terry Hankins
Reprinted from Goat Rancher, May 2005

    Garrick Batten developed what he called the Kiko goat in New Zealand by selecting top feral does from the wilds and breeding them to dairy bucks to increase milk production and thus increasing overall size of the animals. Details of his work can be seen on the American Kiko Goat Association website at www.kikogoats.com.
    He began his culling and selection in the late 1970s. He joined five other New Zealand goat producers to form Goatex Goats Ltd. and presented a paper on the Kiko's development at the IV International Conference on Goats in Brazil in 1987.
    In 1992 another New Zealander, Graham Culliford, purchased Goatex and two years later, Goatex's core herd was sold. Most were sold in the United States on October 29, 1994, at Clyde Castleberry's exotic livestock sale in Lampasas, Texas.
    America's Kiko industry actually had its roots three years earlier when Dr. An Peischel of Goats Unlimited, then located in Hawaii, visited with Batten in New Zealand and purchased four Kiko bucks to cross with her herd of 1,500 Spanish meat goat nannies. The Kiko bucks arrived in Honolulu in January 1991 and were released from quarantine on March 5. The bucks were shipped to Dr. An's ranch on the Big Island of Hilo and began breeding on March 7. Approximately 800 does were bred over the next few months, with the first kids arriving in late August.
    This was the beginning of the Goats Unlimited Kiko flock, which has been moved intact over the years from Hawaii to northern California then to Tennessee, where Dr. An now works as an extension goat specialist.
    Because Dr. An was focusing on her commercial meat goat operation, the Goats Unlimited flock has been bred up over the years with careful selection for milk production, good udders, good feet and fast growth while foraging on Hilo's dormant volcanoes, California's forest lands and now Tennessee's humid brushland.
    Because she was the only U.S. producer with purebred Kikos, many of her animals were used as donor does when breeders began embryo transfers following the 1994 arrival of Kikos in Texas. Her hand-picked does were bred to many of those first Kiko bucks for embryo harvests. If you look, you'll see the GUL designation deep in the pedigrees of many of today's top animals.
    In recent years, Dr. An has traveled back to New Zealand to purchase Kiko semen from Batten, which he retained when he sold Goatex. This semen is the only new Kiko genetics that have been brought into the United States since the exotic sale in 1994.