💚 The VERATA goat. Caceres, SPAIN 🐐🐐🐐🐐

The VERATA breed is known for its great rusticity and at the same time for its good milking capacity. It is a breed native to the valleys of La Vera, Ambroz and Jerte in Cáceres, in the southern foothills of the Central System, although today it also extends throughout the north of the province of Cáceres and also through the province of Toledo as well as by numerous farms throughout Spain.
The VERATA goat is milked and high quality artisanal cheeses are made with its milk. The majority of herds continue to be raised in an extensive system, going out to graze in the mountains of the north of the province of Cáceres. It is a breed that should be conserved and promoted by the competent administrations since numerous threats lurk around it, such as the disappearance of pastoral activity, the penetration of Andalusian dairy breeds and crosses with the Alpine breed to increase milk production.
From an ethnographic point of view it is a very interesting breed and little studied even today.
An aspect that surprises the visitor is its typical helical-shaped antlers, indicating a strong component of the primitive capra falconeri, origin of the races with helical-shaped antlers. The verata goat and the Celtiberian white goat probably have a common origin that must be sought in the different waves of ancient cultures that reached the Iberian Levant through the Mare Nostrum. The Verata goat, from our point of view, preserves the oldest characteristics of this type of primitive cattle. The white layer having been selected, in the Iberian Levant, for various reasons that we will not explain here. Since ancient times, the VERATA goat has been influenced by other neighboring breeds that have given it a great wealth of colors in its coat and different types of horns. In some herds, the influence of the GUADARRAMA type, of the GUISANDO type and more gently of the disappeared JURDANA goat is still appreciated.
In southern Italy and Greece, there are several breeds of goat that faithfully remind us of the Verata breed, as would be the case of the Calabrian Mountain Goat.