Selecting Mohair for Your Project

WHITE MOHAIR – pure bred white Angora Goats produce mohair that has been refined since biblical times and generally represents the premium in softness, curl, strength and consistency. High quality animals have virtually no kemp or medulated fibers that can be coarse and itchy. White mohair also takes dye beautifully and it is easy to get a consistent color from batch to batch.

COLORED MOHAIR – Breeding color into the Angora goat has been popular in recent years. The Colored Angora Goat Breeder’s Association (CAGBA) was formed in 1999 to promote colored Angora goats and to establish standards to strive for in the breed. Developing color requires either breeding the few and rare naturally colored Angora goats to other, or to breed white Angora goats to other breeds to introduce color. The early cross-breeding helped with color but there was a sacrifice in mohair quality. There are now almost 5,000 colored Angora goats registered thus far. The quality of naturally colored mohair now available rivals the quality of white mohair. The naturally colored mohair is very desirable because of the variety of colors for hand spinners. Colors are silver, grey, charcoal, black, champagne, and shades of red, brown and chestnut. Patterned goats (pintos and stripes) allow a variety of colors in a single fleece.Quality colored mohair is still fairly rare. There are more than 300,000 white Angora goats recorded in the US compared to only 4,000+ colored Angora goats.Visit this site to learn more about naturally colored Angora Goats and to find a breeder near you.

While fineness is typically dependent upon the age of the goat, this is not a determination only of the goat’s age; it is a grading of the quality of the mohair. The information below is assuming the animal shears exactly the quality of mohair shown by their age. It is not unusual for a good quality Angora goat to shear yearling quality mohair as a 2-3 year old or an 5 year old goat to produce fine adult quality hair.

It is ALSO possible for a 2nd clip kid to produce yearling mohair or a yearling to have coarse fiber that would only quality as adult. So, it’s the quality of the mohair that is being graded; not the age of the goat producing the mohair.