Savannahs are not the beginning of “Our Story”. This is how it all began:
The spring of 1991 was the beginning of our farm dream. We were inspired by Noli Nolasco, a Filipino immigrant to Canada working in the feed industry (but a DVM in his homeland). He convinced us that meat goats were going to be the livestock business of the future because he was keenly aware of the shortages of goat meat available to his community and other ethnic immigrants to Canada.
Another personal friend and veterinarian, Dr. Martin Wenkoff, made us aware of Landcorp Farming and their New Zealand Boer goat. More importantly, he offered to introduce me to the “exotic goat specialist’ for the company (Chris Neill) as well as the chief executive officer, Mr. Bernard Card.
I travelled to New Zealand with Dr. Wenkoff over the Easter holiday in 1991. We had been invited by Landcorp to inspect their quarantine facility at Keri Downs with a view to assessing its acceptability under Agriculture Canada’s regulations as an export center for Boer goat embryos. Martin is a world renowned embryologist, who had previously worked for Landcorp implanting cattle and deer embryos. As the founder of Canadiana Genetics, Dr. Wenkoff was well aware of the technical and health protocol requirements for the production and export of embryos. As such, his input and direction was critical if Landcorp’s competitive interest in being first to satisfy North America’s interest in Boer goat genetics was to be successful.
At this time Landcorp had been asking $2,000,000 NZ dollars for the “exclusive rights” to their NZ Boer goat genetics in North America. This approach had proved to be unsuccessful because of several factors: a) the necessary embryo import protocols were not in place, b) large scale commercial embryo implantation programs with goats had not been attempted in North America previously and c) then, as now, goats were under appreciated for their potential contribution to agricultural diversification and sustainability and very few believed that the species could support significant economic investment.
Undaunted by these serious impediments, my “mission” was to convince Landcorp that North America’s ethnic markets, increasing health consciousness amongst the American public in general and the gourmet cooks’ desire for variety could “drive meat goat production from the fringe to center stage in our agricultural economy”. More importantly, unlike ostrich meat, goat meat was undersupplied and increasing in value on a global scale. In my mind there was no doubt that these “highly productive and beautiful animals would create new opportunities for the North American farm and ranch community.”
In the end, Landcorp agreed to my plan to access the U.S. market via Olds College in Canada and as they say, “the rest is history”. In the spring of 1993 the first New Zealand Boer goats were born in Alberta, Canada and by the spring of 1994 Keri-Rose had 119 NZ Boer goats as our foundation herd. This was the largest private Boer herd in Canada at the time. We immediately sold most of this first kid crop into Texas with the help of Dr. Frank Pinkerton and Annette Maze and then began plans to import Boers directly from South Africa since the New Zealand genetics could not be directly traced to South Africa’s renowned stud flocks. Dr. Wenkoff argued successfully for a direct South African embryo protocol and Canada opened North America’s door to authentic South African Boer goats.
The fall of 1995 saw Keri-Rose, its associates and custom clients implant over 600 frozen embryos directly from South Africa. At this time over one-third of all authentic South African Boer goats in Canada could be found within a 25 mile radius of the Keri-Rose farm near Brooks, Alberta. Our 50% live kid crop from the frozen SA embryos was considerably higher than was achieved by most of our contemporaries (results ranged from 4-50% and averaged about 25% at best) and this volume allowed us to supply quality seed stock to many American herds. With our South African kid crop on the ground we sold our remaining Landcorp females to the Menard, Texas herds of Joe Tipton and Carroll Looney and became 100% South African from this time forward.
The Keri-Rose base herd was primarily sourced through the Excelsior Stud of Jurie and Danie Schoeman. This SA stud produced the 1994 SA Grand Champion Ram, “Jurie” and even more significantly, “Noster”; the first South African Ram collected for Artificial Insemination. We then added Nico Botha and Lukas Burger genetics from friends who managed other original primary Canadian quarantines for the SA genetics (Kent and Denise Blaker – Rockhollow, and Vera DeJong – Givinitago).
As president of the Canadian Boer Goat Association, I traveled to Worcester for the 1996 World Boer Goat Championships in order to meet the South African breeders, to begin researching other importation opportunities and to meet Dr. Quentin Campbell, former head of the SA National Performance Testing Program for sheep and goats. Dr. Campbell had played a catalytic role in the development of Dorper sheep as well as Boer goats but more importantly to me at the time, he was acting as a primary consultant to Mr.Lubbe Cilliers on the development of the Savannah goat. Given his bias in favor of production economics over show ring determined “fancy points” he reminded me of my good friend and mentor Dr. Pinkerton. Like other survivors of the early boom and bust days in the Boer goat business I was determined to have productive animals that paid for themselves rather than overfed show animals. Given the importance of the showring in North America however, I also wanted to know from his academic perspective, what bloodlines to cross with my existing Schoeman, Botha and Burger genetics.
As a direct result of Dr. Campbell’s consultation, I traveled to South Africa again in 1999 and imported Boer embryos from the Paardefontein stud of Boetie and Stephanus Malan. Only the best ewes (does) were selected and we were fortunate to flush daughters of “Noster”, “Popeye” and “Vlek”. “Popeye” was only the second ram (after Noster) to ever have been selected for nationwide semen distribution in South Africa. “Vlek” had topped the elite Kimberley sale and we were fortunate to use an outstanding Vlek grandson in our embryo program as well. This was the largest sampling of elite Malan genetics ever to arrive in North America.
Keri-Rose was proud to be the first Canadian consignor to a Texas Boer Goat Production Sale (Brenda Behring/South Central Texas Boer Goat Production Sale in 2000) and even more proud when Kenneth Mincey and Fanie Schoeman became the volume Keri-Rose purchaser and used our genetics in the development of their well known Georgia herd. Brenda Behring also made us proud when she showed a Keri-Rose full blood doe kid to a first place finish (0-4 months) at the 1998 ABGA National Show.
Kay King (Galaxy Ranch) of North Carolina also used Keri- Rose genetics to good advantage as has Norman and Kallie Kohls (TX), Dennis Ansetta (LA), John and Pat Bloomer (NY), Doug Bowne (NY), Carol Rochester (TX) and Annette Maze (TX) to name a few valued clients over the years. Keri-Rose has also been proud to have genetics used at North Carolina State University and at Cobleskill College in New York.
A full red, South African, Boer buck, “Canadian Hunter”; as well as a red ET female flush mate, were used by Kallie Kohls- York in her well known coloured Boer breeding program. Canadian Hunter was later purchased by Dr. Fred Homeyer.
The Keri-Rose herd of Boers, as well as Savannahs, were housed and partnered with Chris Glynos, Bethlehem Boer Goats, Bethlehem, Connecticut from 2003-2008. Our Boers were dispersed in 2005 so that we could focus all of our attention on “the performance breed”, our South African Savannah goats.The Keri-Rose Savannah herd returned to Canada in 2008 where they were amalgamated with the Pat O’Brien (Benalto, AB) Savannah herd (produced by ET at the Keri-Rose facility in 2001) when he decided to sellout. This amalgamation made Keri-Rose the only full blood Savannah herd in Canada. A challenge and a responsibility that we enjoyed tremendously.
In 2016 the Keri-Rose Savannah herd was split with a legacy herd remaining at the Hurlburt Ranch in Fort Macleod, Alberta while the remainder of the herd was exported to the Cayman Islands.
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