| Conservation status | FAO (2007): critical [1] |
|---|---|
| Country of origin | Italy |
| Distribution | Province of Gorizia |
| Standard | MIPAAF |
| Use | meat, milk [2] |
| Traits | |
| Weight | |
| Height | |
| Coat | white |
| Beard | usually bearded |
| Notes | |
| ears are pointed and erect; crop-eared mutations are seen | |
| |
The Istriana is an endangered breed of domestic goat indigenous to Istria and the Karst regions of the northern Adriatic, from north-east Italy to Croatia and Slovenia. A population of about 100 head was documented in the Italian province of Gorizia in the 1980s; there is no more recent data. [2] In Croatia, where raising any goat not of the Swiss Saanen breed was illegal in the 1940s and 1950s, it has largely disappeared; a study is under way to establish whether it may be recoverable. [5]
In Italy the Istriana is one of the forty-three autochthonous goat breeds of limited distribution for which a herdbook is kept by the Associazione Nazionale della Pastorizia, the Italian national association of sheep- and goat-breeders. [6] [7] No numbers have been recorded in the herd-book for many years; [8] however, a population of 80 was reported to DAD-IS in 2005. [3] Its conservation status in Italy was listed as "critical" by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2007. [1]