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Massachusett 4-H Newsletter - Spring 2008

Fainting and Survival

4-H member, Cori Katz, and Panda Photo: Nancy Palmieri

The life of a Tennessee Fainting Goat can be hard - and short. When threatened, its muscles spasm. It gets rigid, and falls over. In the 19th-century, they were bred that way to distract predators from more valuable livestock . . . sacrificial goats, so to speak.

Thanks to the efforts of Extension’s 4-H Heritage Breeds Program, working with the UMass Veterinary and Animal Sciences Department, and Rhode Island’s Swiss Village Farm, the Fainting Goat and other endangered farm breeds are finding a safe haven among members of four Massachusetts 4-H “Heritage Breeds” clubs. This month the first of ten Fainting Goats raised at Swiss Village Farm will be adopted by 4-H families in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts has the only 4-H clubs in the U.S. dedicated to the preservation of heritage breeds - largely natural breeds that are no longer considered commercially viable. The clubs, led by members of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, include the Hancock Shaker Village 4-H Club, the Plimoth Plantation Rare Breed Goat Club, 4-H Heri-tage Farming Club of Montague, and Plymouth’s Animals Are Us 4-H Club.

UMass Extension’s Director of Community Education in Animal Agriculture Carrie Chickering-Sears is supervising the program, along with UMass Professor Emeritus of Animal Science Dr. Robert Duby, who runs On The Farm, a consulting firm that has worked with Swiss Village in its preservation efforts. Chickering-Sears is hoping to expand the adoption program, and is planning a two-day summer camp session focusing on heritage breeds. The program, she notes, is an attempt to maintain biodiversity.

“Commercial breeding has too often undermined natural selection, and led to the loss of over one thousand breeds since 1900,” she notes. “Once they disappear, it is almost impossible to recreate them.”