«I’m proud of my kids»

According to pastoralists, the signs and parameters used to identify a goat are both aesthetic and utilitarian in nature, and there are countless local terms to define them. In short, there are two main considerations on which pastoralists tend to focus: beauty and productivity. The first is mainly based on coat colour diversity, shades and length, the size of the animal, shape of the horns and other morphological characteristics such as the shape of the ears, the presence of a frontal tuft, of wattles and spots of various colours on the snout and forehead. On the other hand, the utilitarian parameters refer, particularly, to the morphology of the udders, which denotes not only the level of productivity of the animal but also the easiness of holding nipples during milking. On-going research has reported at least 25 different words used by pastoralists to identify the coat colours of their goats. Generally, pastoralists classify goats’ chromatic phenotypes (coat colours) into five main categories: gray or cardélla , black, white, red (ruscia) and  lèpere  (hare) (e.g., light brown like the colour of the homonymous animal —Lepus europaeus). 

In addition to these five basic colours, a complex range of definitions is used to distinguish other chromatic variations: colour shades, spots, speckles on the snout and on the ears, etc. For instance, pastoralists use the term capestrina to refer, generally, to a black typology of goat having a white lower abdomen and two vertical white lines on the face, which give them a unique and very attractive appearance. When facial lines are found on goats having a dominant red/orange colour, then these animals are classified as red capestrina or, more precisely, in the local dialect, as crapa ruscia capestrina. Instead, when facial lines have a brownish colour or when the animal’s cheeks are reddish brown, then pastoralists will define this particular phenotype as faccetella .