Angora goats attract British teen Mitchell Snook-Bevis to Gippsland
FROM England to Gippsland, 14-year-old Mitchell Snook-Bevis has already taken his passion for Angora goats around the world.
FROM England to Gippsland, 14-year-old Mitchell Snook-Bevis has already taken his passion for Angora goats around the world.
Hailing from Hampshire in southern England, the budding farmer visited Doug and Margaret Nicholls’s Angora enterprise near Seaspray for 16 days in August after meeting the couple at an English county show in 2014.
In June Mrs Nicholls’ was invited back to judge the show, in which Mitchell won supreme champion with his buck and less than two months later he made the trip Down Under with the help of donations from a young farmers group and his grandparents.
“When I grow up I would like to be an Angora goat farmer and a shearer, so it has been good to see a bigger farm like this,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell experienced kidding while staying with the Nicholls, who run about 1600 goats on their 650ha farm.
“I learnt shearing skills, used working dogs for the first time and recorded kid numbers,” Mitchell said.
“I live on an Angora goat farm at home and I’ve only got about 70 animals so it was good to see a bigger farm.”
Mrs Nicholls, who is the president of the Victorian division of Mohair Australia, said having Mitchell in Australia was a result of the connection she developed with the English Angora community, which was strengthened last year when she sent embryos overseas.
“It’s so fabulous to have our genetics in England. They’ve got them and now they go ahead with them in leaps and bounds,” Mrs Nicholls said.
She said it was her goal for Angora goats to become a mainstream farming enterprise in Australia and around the world.
“We don’t want the Angora to be treated like a flashy animal or a fad or pet. That is what I’m always trying to emphasise to people,” she said. “They really are a dual- purpose animal.”
The Nicholls average about $24/kg across their clip and each sheep produces up to 6kg of mohair from two shearings each year.
Animals no longer used for mohair are sold for 500-600c/kg carcass weight or up to $150.
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