Goat Science

When discussing animal species, it is fundamental to consider the quantity and size of the usable products that come from them. Domestication of the goat began at the border of the Neolithic Period and the Stone Age, about 10,000 years ago. The goat has become a co-ani- mal in the past few years but is mainly kept for its meat, milk and hair, as well as fur pro- duction. Accordingly, we use a wide variety of "products". Goats are bred in large numbers of varieties and breeds, and are kept in a wide range of environmental conditions on Earth. Different breeds are also crossed to reach specific goals.

The number of goats kept in the world is slightly smaller than that of sheep (about 1.2 bil- lion heads), but still, more than 1 billion heads offer meat and milk for almost 3 billion peo- ple. According to the data of FAOSTAT (2018), 1,002,810,368 heads of goats were kept in the world in 2016, from which more than half were produced in Asia (55.45% - 556,019,726 heads). Africa was ranked in second place (38.66% - 387,667,193 heads), followed by the Americas (3.78% - 37,866,521 heads), Europe (1.69% -16,965,650 heads) and Oceania (0.34% - 4,291,278 heads).

China was the biggest (14.87% - 149,091,143 heads) goat-keeper country (as in the case of sheep) in 2016, and the following countries were also part of the top 10 goat-keeper coun- tries: India (13.35% -133,874,637 heads), Nigeria (7.37% - 73,879,561 heads), Pakistan (7.01% – 70,300,000 heads), Bangladesh (5.59% - 56,083,240 heads), Sudan (3.12% -31,325,105 heads), Ethiopia (3.01% -30,200,226 heads), Kenya (2.67% - 26,745,916 heads), Mongolia (2.55% - 25,574,861 heads) and Mali (2.21% -22,141,497 heads).

Research and development carried out so far and summarised under “goat science” has an enormous number of fields covering large or small results, some of which have been select- ed for this book. They concern a wide range of knowledge and provide good summaries of results reached in different fields of goat science.