This letter is in response to the letter about colored boer goats on Boergoats.com. It is true that the red and black boer goats are not traditional and most breeder's did not originally start out to raise colored boer goats.

The birth of reds, blacks and paints on most ranches occurred naturally from the breeding of two traditional colored boers. Although the South African breeders do not admit to the birth of colored boers in their flocks, many of the red boers are the results of embryos imported from South Africa into Canada. Breeders had paid high dollars to have these embryos imported - What should they have done?

Red goats have been registered with the American Boer Goat Association since the beginning of the registry. When Norman Kohls, 1st President and member #1, registered Bugger and Rodney Robinson registered Gideon, they were accepted as non traditionally colored boers. As breeders continued to breed traditional colored animals, they noticed that some bloodlines threw more color into the herd and looked for those bloodlines to add to their herds. Many of them were from the ABGA " Ennobled " herd book. The colored boers since the beginning have been registered without any problems by all of the registries.

We joined all three registries when there were considerably less members than now so we were there when the registries "built the runway". We knew and the registries knew what the standards were and the colored boers were registered under those standards.

The colored boers were registered from the beginning as non traditionally colored by adding the distinctive coloring instead of color correct, whether that was red, painted, spot on back, red leg, red butt and so on. It seems within reason to assume that if the sire and dam are registered as a fullblood boer goat, that the offspring would also be a fullblood boer goat. There are already too many boer goat registries out there - adding one more would further add to the confusion that breeders face!

Now a motion is proposed to change the standards. The current standards when written in 1993 were based on South African standards and adapted for the AMERICAN Boer Goat Association.

The breeders of colored boer goats do not expect that you change the standards to accommodate them, because the current standards in place since 1993 have always allowed for the registration of non - traditional animals. It has always been acknowledged that the added color was a fault. On the other hand, we do not expect the breed standards to change to disqualify them from being registered as what they are - boer goats of color.

We have listened to the noise from the runway since 1993 and we do think that the flight plan should be changed to allow the colored goats to compete on the equal footing as their traditional peers. What we can't accept is that after eight years, you want to build a new runway.