Conservation status | FAO (2007): critical [1] |
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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 | |
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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]