Let's see what Rickey Hunt says about his comment.

Not gonna hijack the thread again but those are some funny pics/posts. Y'all might have hurt my feelings... If I had one. ;-)

snowing here in north texas

When we started breeding mouflons there were a lot of folks saying there were no pure mouflons around. Some still say that. We started with some good zoo stock. But, not all zoo stock when it comes to sheep and ibex is pure. Back then some of the Stumbergs were crossed with mouflons (people trying to make a bigger mouflon)and some of them made their way into some zoo's as pure mouflons. We tried to avoid those crosses. Some of those rams would look just like a mouflon except their bases were too big and some did not have saddles. We had some breed characteristic that we came up with and stuck with it. As a result numerous rams were bred here that we sold that broke that 40 inch mark. Another myth is that rams or ibex from other countries are all pure. Not so. They have the same problems we have, but even worse. There are more types of domestic sheep and goats than you can shake a stick at in Europe and the Middle East.

Let me say this about ibex. When they started bringing a FEW over here there was not hardly any nannies to go around. Game ranchers bred those few and tried to keep a pure herd, but they also bred them to some of the dairy breeds. They did this because there were very few pure nannies to go around. They took the pure billy and bred him back to the hybrid daughter of his. Then he bred those daughters back to the original billy, so on. If they had not done that we would not have hardly any ibex today.

Rickey,Thanks for the background. Very informative.

Obviously Ricky and others know their stuff and many of us could stand to learn a bit from them.

I do find it interesting though that we have been able to maintain some pure Nubian, Siberian, and alpine ibex herds in Tx, but the Persians seemed to get lost. My only speculation is that they didn't have the same value when the industry was younger, and when you cross a Nubian to a dairy goat or Spanish goat and breed back, you get something that approximates a persian.

a lot of people will call a goat that somewhat looks the part a persian. it seems that the fall back name for ibex that aren't nubian are also called persian. we are working hard to change that and in a few years I am confident you will see persian ibex that people will be astounded with. stay tuned!!

Flip the coin to the other side....Maybe the story with the Persians is just the opposite...they did have value and people breed them to other goats species nannies because they wanted to get a hybrid they could sell which had a Persian look...sort of like what is being done a lot now with Transcaspian Urials.