Growing Cashmere in NZ with David Shaw

This week on the podcast we're switching up species and discussing cashmere goats with David Shaw.

In 2017, David undertook a self-directed R&D project to see if he could ‘resurrect’ the cashmere industry. David found that New Zealand had some of the best cashmere fibre in the world.

“We know our fibre is whiter and longer. Research indicates that the fibre from this part of the world is relatively softer. We have people wanting the fibre, we have a market, but we don’t have a supply.”

So, David founded “New Zealand Cashmere” to solve the problem. While David has passed ownership of New Zealand Cashmere on, he is still a passionate champion of the industry. 

David farms on the north side of the Catlin Ranges. “Three rows of hills before the south coast of New Zealand” and, beyond that, Antarctica. Their farm is usually summer safe and winter wet, finishing around 7,000 lambs and several hundred cattle a year. David explains how the goats integrate into the “typical” New Zealand farming system. 

“We farm them quite differently here. Goats eat from the top of the pasture down, sheep eat from the bottom up. If you put the goats in second, you're forcing them to the bottom of the pastures. So, we put the goats in first and they take out the fibrous material and the thistles and the other weeds on the top of the pasture. And then the other stock come in behind them. That lowers the interaction with worms and it also benefits our existing stock.”

“I saw something in the animal that was quite different to sheep and beef. They cleaned up all the weeds, so we technically didn't have any weeds on the farm any longer. Goats were utilising parts of the pasture other animals did not utilise”, explains David. “The goats in my mind are a huge tool that people have ignored or forgotten or aren't aware of.”

So what is the financial return on cashmere farming? David’s flock averages about 400g of 16 micron cashmere. Their doe hoggets are doing around 200g at 14 micron.

“Goats with up to half a kilo of cashmere in them, if you put that in a relative sense, that's $50-70 dollars worth of fleece value and the goat adult weight is half of an adult sheep. So you’re looking at well over $100 a stock unit from fibre returns alone”, says David.

“So, the question is, how quickly can farmers build up to that from a foundation flock and then capture that out of the processing?”, David asks. It doesn’t take as long as you would think. With the work David has been doing over the past 40 years, he explains, “You can go from a multicoloured foundation doe flock to all white, 14-15 micron cashmere in one generation. Genetically, we’ve come a long way. The flock is homozygous white, so we’re at a very different starting point. It's our role as breeders to offer the highest genetic gains into flocks as quickly as possible.”

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