Mohair Price Structure and Flock Design

#The ratio that designs the flock

At the last sale of the 2026 summer season, in Gqeberha on 2 June 2026, kid mohair cleared at a clean indicator of R797.26/kg. Strong adult hair from the same sale cleared at R321.59/kg (Mohair SA, catalogue 202607).

That is a ratio of 2.48 to 1. The same animal, the same farm, the same shearing shed — and the fibre it grew as a kid is worth two and a half times the fibre it will grow as an old goat. No other decision in an Angora enterprise turns on a single number that hard, and most flocks have never been designed against it.

#Reading the sale report properly

Take the whole of that sale first, because a farmer who reads only the headline number will misprice the year.

Sale of 2 June 2026, catalogue 202607: 174 915 kg offered, 99% sold. The average market indicator closed at R407.63/kg, up 1%. The season average was R397.69/kg, 7% above the 2025 summer season. 67% of the offering was RMS-certified. The top price was R1 100.00/kg for a bale of 24.7-micron super-style kid mohair. Earlier in the same season a record kid price of R1 330/kg was achieved on three bales (African Farming, June 2026).

Now the class ladder from that sale, in both units.

Class (2 June 2026)	Greasy indicator	Clean indicator
Kids	R699.60/kg	R797.26/kg
Young goats	R394.84/kg	R454.83/kg
Fine adults (2026)	R322.46/kg	R364.57/kg
Strong adults (2026)	R283.26/kg	R321.59/kg
Overall (2026)	—	R464.43/kg

Every indicator in that table comes off the report for the sale of 2 June 2026.

Careful — this one bites

This is where budgets break. The greasy indicator is what applies to the weight that physically leaves your farm. The clean indicator is what the fibre is worth after yield loss in processing. They are different numbers for the same fibre and they are printed side by side on the same report.

Multiply your greasy kilograms by a clean price and you overstate income by roughly 14% — 13.5% on strong adult hair, 14.0% on kid hair, at the 2026 summer prices above. On a flock clip that is not a rounding error; it is the difference between a budget that survives contact with the bank and one that does not.

The confusion is genuinely easy to fall into. Secondary summaries of this very sale have reproduced the greasy class indicators under a "clean" heading. Take the class indicators off the Mohair SA report itself, check which column you are in, and write the unit next to every number in your budget.

#Working the ladder into a flock structure

Reported farm-level clip runs at about 1 to 1.5 kg per animal per shearing (AFP/IOL, March 2026), and Angoras are shorn at least twice a year (Agribook). Take 1.2 kg a shearing, so 2.4 kg greasy per animal per year, and apply the greasy indicators from the sale of 2 June 2026 to a 500-head shearing flock.

Annual greasy fibre income per animal, at 2.4 kg, on the 2026 greasy indicators:

Kid: R699.60 × 2.4 = R1 679
Young goat: R394.84 × 2.4 = R948
Fine adult: R322.46 × 2.4 = R774 (2026)
Strong adult: R283.26 × 2.4 = R680 (2026)

Structure A — a long-lived flock (100 kids, 100 young goats, 150 fine adults, 150 strong adults), at 2026 prices: R167 900 + R94 800 + R116 100 + R102 000 = R480 800.

Structure B — a young flock (160 kids, 140 young goats, 120 fine adults, 80 strong adults), at the same 2026 prices: R268 600 + R132 700 + R92 900 + R54 400 = R548 600 for the 2026 year.

Same 500 animals. Same hectares. Same shearing shed. About R67 800 more from the fibre, or 14%, purely from where the age structure sits.

Two honest corrections to that arithmetic, because the direction survives them but the size does not. Kid fleeces are lighter than adult fleeces and a kid is first shorn only at about six months, so a young flock will not clip a flat 2.4 kg per head — at 2026 prices the real gap is smaller than R67 800. And a younger flock needs a higher replacement rate, which means more does kidding, more kid mortality exposure, and more of your income riding on reproduction rather than on fibre.

Which points straight at the tension that makes this a design decision rather than a preference.

#What actually separates a profitable Angora ewe

There is a South African lifetime-income study that settles a long-running argument about this, and it is regularly quoted with half of its finding missing.

Three Angora flocks were followed from 2000 to 2015 — 682 ewes with six kidding opportunities each. Comparing the top 100 and the bottom 100 ewes by lifetime income, adult fleece weight and yearly fleece income did not differ between the groups. The main difference was yearly reproduction income (Hoon & Snyman).

That is where most retellings stop, and it produces the wrong conclusion — that fibre traits do not matter. The same study found the top and bottom groups did differ significantly in early fleece weight, fibre diameter, early body weight and maiden-ewe reproduction.

Put the two halves together and the rule is precise: fibre traits matter in the young animal, which is also where the money is. Selecting a six-year-old ewe on the weight of her adult fleece tells you nothing about whether she has been profitable. Selecting a maiden on her early fleece weight, her fibre diameter, her early body weight and what she does at her first kidding tells you a great deal. The authors' own recommendation is to select young ewes on early body weight, number of kids produced, and total weight of kids weaned at first parity.

#The 27 kg gate, and what it is not

The industry rule is that a body weight of 27 kg at 18 months is generally regarded as the minimum for a young ewe to conceive and carry her foetuses to parturition (Snyman).

Read the wording carefully, because it is doing exactly what a good benchmark does and nothing more. That is what the industry regards as a minimum. It is a rule of thumb reported by Grootfontein, not a measured cliff-edge, and it should not be taught as though a 26.5 kg ewe fails and a 27.5 kg ewe succeeds.

What is measured in that study is the spread, and the spread is the real argument. 30% of the young ewes were under 25 kg at mating, and the range ran from 15 kg to 45.8 kg depending on rearing environment. A flock in which nearly a third of maidens are below the threshold and the heaviest is three times the lightest is a flock where the scale — not the ram, not the genetics — is the next intervention.

South African specifics

Angora flock benchmarks, from 12 South African studs (2002) — the numbers to measure your own flock against (Snyman, GADI):

Measure	Range across studs	Average
Kidding percentage	73–91%	82%
Scanned dry	4.9–22.1%	14.1%
Multiples	3–34%	18%
Kid survival	81–94%	89%
Weaning percentage	59–102%	85%

Look at the weaning range. From 59% to 102% across studs in the same industry, in the same year, on broadly the same genetics. That spread is management, and it is worth more than any price movement you will see at a sale.

#The certification layer, and the argument underneath it

67% of the 2 June 2026 offering was RMS-certified. Under the Responsible Mohair Standard, farms certify to Animal Welfare, Land Management and Social modules, and every subsequent stage of the supply chain certifies to Content Claim Standard requirements up to the seller in the final business-to-business transaction; retailers selling to consumers are not required to be certified (Mohair SA). The audit regime is an annual broker visit plus an annual third-party audit. South Africa produces the majority of the world's mohair — 56% of global production in 2024, with Lesotho second at about 16% — and more than 90% of the clip is exported (Agribook).

Be careful what you conclude from that 67%. It is the certified share of one sale offering. No figure is published for how many farms are certified or what share of the national clip they cut, and no certified-versus-uncertified price split is published either — so nobody can tell you from public data what RMS pays. What you can see is where the buyers are: in an export trade of that size, certification reads as an access question long before it reads as a premium.

Contested — here is both sides

Is the Angora still adapted to the country it is farmed in?

Grootfontein's own position: its energy paper states plainly that "the Angora goat is no longer well adapted to produce and survive in its historical habitat in the R.S.A. without sufficient supplementary feeding," and speculates that a more robust animal carrying less mohair could suit harsh environments better. Note the provenance honestly — that is a 1990s statement from an energy-metabolism paper, crediting the idea to earlier work from 1971. It is a long-standing internal industry argument, not a new finding.

The counter-case, with numbers: the Jansenville composite work produced a 75% Angora : 25% Boer genotype that produced and reproduced under extensive conditions without any supplementary feeding, weaning 16.3 kg of kid per doe per year against 7.1 kg for pure Angoras — at the cost of 0.54 kg less fleece (2.85 kg against 3.39 kg) and a body weight 8.7 kg heavier, which is itself a feed cost (Snyman).

What this is really asking: whether your Angora enterprise is a fibre business that keeps goats, or a goat business that sells fibre. The composite doubles the kid output and gives up half a kilogram of the highest-value fibre in the country. There is no correct answer — there is a context, a market and a farm, and the trade-off is genuinely unresolved in the South African literature.

Before the next selling season, do three things: pull the class indicators off the Mohair SA report yourself and write "greasy" or "clean" beside every number in your budget; put a scale in front of every maiden before mating and record what it says; and count how many age groups you are actually carrying. The first stops you overstating income by 14%, the second is the cheapest reproductive intervention on the farm, and the third is a decision you are already making by default.

#Check yourself

3 questions — answers explained as you go

1Your budget shows 600 kg of strong adult mohair leaving the farm. You price it at the clean indicator from the sale of 2 June 2026. What have you done?
Why: At that 2 June 2026 sale strong adult hair was R283.26/kg greasy and R321.59/kg clean — a 13.5% gap, and 14.0% on kid hair. The greasy indicator is the one that matches what physically leaves your shed. Writing the unit next to every price in the budget is a two-minute habit that removes a systematic overstatement.
2Kid mohair cleared at 2.48 times the strong adult price. Does that mean you should shift the flock as young as possible?
Why: Angora ewes reproduce worst at two and three years old and best from four to nine, and two-year-old dams lose 17.4% of their kids against 7% for ten-year-old dams. A younger flock earns more per kilogram of fibre and carries more reproduction risk. That is a design decision to be made on purpose, with the replacement rate written down — not a preference.
3South African lifetime-income data on 682 Angora ewes found that adult fleece weight did not separate the top 100 from the bottom 100 by lifetime income. What is the correct selection conclusion?
Why: This is the half-quoted finding in South African Angora farming. The same study found the top and bottom groups did differ significantly in early fleece weight, fibre diameter, early body weight and maiden-ewe reproduction. So fibre matters — it matters early, which is also where the price ladder puts the money. Selecting a mature ewe on her adult clip is the part that does not work.