Scientists at The Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland have exported Scottish cashmere goat semen to Kazakhstan to help goat herders there improve the quality of their cashmere-producing breeds and increase their incomes through cashmere sales.

The frozen semen of three Scottish cashmere bucks from The Macaulay’s Sourhope Research Station has been exported to Almaty, Kazakhstan for improving cashmere goats at the Kazak Scientific Institute of Livestock and Veterinary Research. The Kazak cashmere breeding flock is now more than 100 strong and in Spring this year, the first kids bred from Scottish cashmere goat semen are expected to be born.

Carol Kerven, Research Associate at The Macaulay Institute, explained the rationale behind the project: “Realising that cashmere sales could increase the incomes of pastoralists who had lost their livelihoods after the state farms collapsed in the 1990s, Kazak livestock scientists became interested in creating an improved breed of cashmere goat. They wanted to obtain good quality breeding material from Scottish cashmere goats, which are renowned for the high quality of their cashmere.

‘The British Embassy in Kazakhstan provided small grants from 2001 to 2004 for Kazak scientists to buy native goats and improve the breed, with advice from Macaulay Institute scientists. In some remote desert regions of Kazakhstan, pastoralists still keep native goats that have not been crossed with Soviet angora breeds. Macaulay’s Animal Fibre Evaluation Laboratory assessed fibre samples of goats from these regions and some were found to have good quality cashmere. Some of the goats were collected to create an elite breeding flock in Kazakhstan.

In a separate but related project, The Macaulay Institute in collaboration with the Kazakhstan Sheep Breeding Institute has succeeded in hybridizing the endangered wild markhor goat species (hunted for its distinctive screw horns) with domestic Kazak cashmere goats to produce higher quality cashmere fibre.

Four live hybrid offspring were born and some of the bucks have successfully mated with Kazak does to produce three hybrid kids with cashmere fibres up to 25% finer than ordinary domestic Kazak stock. Goats from the elite breeding flock are now being distributed to Kazak farmers to improve the quality of cashmere produced by their flocks.

Dr Iain Wright, Chief Executive of Macaulay Research Consultancy Services Ltd., one of the commercial arms of the Institute, said: “The Macaulay is very pleased to have the opportunity to transfer knowledge gained from earlier research, for the good of the cashmere industry in Kazakhstan.

This has the potential to have considerable impact on the livelihoods of pastoralists in Central Asia.”

The Macaulay Institute is the premier land use research institute in the UK. Two hundred and seventy staff are based at the Macaulay Institute at Craigiebuckler in Aberdeen. The Macaulay Institute aims to be an international leader in research on the use of rural land resources for the benefit of people and the environment and is involved in research across the globe; from Scotland to Chile and China. More about the Macaulay Institute can be found at http://www.macaulay.ac.uk/

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