Arapawa
Have a Arapawa to sell? List it.Critical on the Conservation Priority List, 2026 edition
About Arapawa goats
The Arapawa is a goat from a single rugged island at the top of New Zealand's South Island. Goats were put ashore there by European voyagers, and records show Captain Cook released some in 1777. Island lore holds that today's animals descend directly from them.
They were long assumed to be Old English goats, a common British type in the 1700s. DNA work says otherwise. The Arapawa is genetically its own thing and may be distantly related to South African breeds, which fits how ships worked: livestock was taken on at the Cape of Good Hope on the way to Australia and New Zealand.
The population sat undisturbed for centuries until the 1970s, when the New Zealand Forest Service ruled the goats were damaging native forest and ordered them removed. In 1987 two island residents, Betty and Walt Rowe, set up a sanctuary with friends and volunteers and brought 40 goats back into domestication. Nearly every Arapawa alive traces to that rescue.
It remains one of the rarest goat breeds in the world. As of 2011 there were roughly 150 to 200 in domestic hands.
Sourced from The Livestock Conservancy and the breed’s registry, reviewed by HoofnHorn.
No Arapawa goats at auction right now.
Heritage breeds come up in ones and twos, so this is normal. We will email you the moment a Arapawa is listed.