Fabulous Fibers
At the Speck Angora Ranch, ranch manager Steve Nelson separates the sale goats from the ones that will be kept and shorn later in the day.
--Staff photo by Rost
Ranch aims to create perfect goat
By CAROLYN ROST, Country World Staff Writer
August 7, 2008 - "Mohair is known as the diamond fiber. It has great luster," said Dr. Fred Speck, Jr. "If you have a rug made out of mohair, it has this beautiful shine to it."
For Speck, selling mohair that is used in products such as carpets, wall fabrics, sweaters, socks and suits has been a business venture since 1986 when he and his wife, Linda and children Trey, Sarah and Laura formed Speck Angoras. According to Speck, their goal is to produce goats that have fine hair with style, character and long staple length and an excellent body conformation.
"The reason I like raising Angoras is to see if I can try to raise the perfect goat. It's just a challenge to keep improving your herd."
On their land located in Kerrville, the Specks maintain a herd of about 300 to 350 breeding does and around 30 stud bucks.
"We raise kids and raise them up to yearlings. We usually have about a 100 percent kid crop ... when we have everything here, we have about a thousand goats, but then I'll have a sale this summer and sell a lot of the yearlings."
Many of the goats sold, he said, "are shown at the local goat shows and the bigger major shows and do very well." Over the years, the Speck children were successful in showing at the major youth Angora goat shows and fleece shows.
When it comes to shearing goats for their fleece, Speck said they normally shear twice per year. Goats, he said, grow hair faster than sheep grow wool.
"They only shear sheep once a year usually because it grows slowly, but mohair grows an average of one inch per month. When the mills buy the hair to process it, they usually don't like it under four inches of length and they don't like to process it much longer than six inches."
When it comes to finding good shearing crews, that task is getting harder to do. In the 1960s, he said, "there were probably six million Angoras in Texas and there were lots of sheep also, so there used to be a large number of shearing crews in lots of different towns in this part of Texas. As the number of goats and sheep have decreased, the number of shearing crews have decreased."
Speck tries to find shearers that take their time and are gentle with his animals. His shearers, he said, can shear about 400 goats in two days.
"My goats are larger than most commercial goats on the range and shear a lot more hair and so they have to take a bit longer to shear them."
And shearing a goat, he said, is hard work.
"Those guys are amazing. It takes a lot of muscles that most people don't normally use and it's not as easy as it looks. It takes a lot of skill."
Once the goats are shorn, the fleece is bagged for marketing. Speck said most producers sell to local warehouses who then have buyers come and buy the hair. Speck takes his to a warehouse in Rocksprings called Priour-Varga Wool and Mohair. The manager there, he said, "does one of the best jobs I found for the producer in trying to get the most for their hair."
Speck also sells a lot of his hair to an individual who markets it over the internet to hand spinners. When selling the mohair, he said, fine hair brings a producer more money.
"When we say fine hair, we are going on fiber diameter and finer hair is smaller diameter."
As a general rule, he said, "the finer the hair, the softer it is and the more desirable it is to make clothing products because it is softer and less scratchy."
According to Speck, there are five different grades of hair that have to do with the fiber diameter. There is super kid hair, which is shorn from four- to six-month-old goats; kid hair is shorn from goats that are six months to one-year-old; yearling hair shorn from goats that are 18-months-old; fine adult hair shorn from goats that are two-years-old on up; and adult hair.
As goats age, their mohair increases its diameter, growing coarser as the animal grows. Over the years, however, Speck said he has been able to develop a herd with uniformity and fineness of fleece.
"I've bred a type of goat that tends to shear very fine hair even at older ages. The hair doesn't tend to get coarse as they get older."
Even though finer hair is preferred, both fine and coarse mohair is in demand. The coarser fibers, he said, are good for making rugs and carpets. Clothing items such as sweaters, socks and suits are made from the finer fibers.
"The Italians and the French tend to make very fine mens clothing, like suits, out of mohair. The reason they like to use mohair in the suits is because it just gives a great shine and luster to the overall product. It is a quality product."
As well as being lustrous, mohair also lasts a long time, is fire resistant and takes dye exceptionally well, he said.
"Mohair takes dyes better than just about any fiber and so, for that reason, it's a very quality fiber."
For more information about Speck Angoras visit www.SpeckAngoras.com.
