NH News - "The New Milk Cows"

JULY/AUGUST 2005

Water Buffalo
The New Milk Cows

Article by Tina Wright
Photos by David Seaver

As you approach Star Hill Dairy, the sights and smells are familiar to dairy farms everywhere. But then you hear it—a calf bleats and it sounds more like an air horn on a truck, and you know there is definitely something different about this farm.

Instead of Holsteins or Jerseys you see big dark cow-like animals with horizontal ears set low on their heads in front of horns that curve back a fullhalf-circle. These creatures seem out of place in the Vermont dairy country, looking more like something from the pages of National Geographic.

They are water buffalo, and they are being fed and milked almost like any other dairy cow.

David Muller has established the first water buffalo creamery in the United States at Star Hill Dairy in Woodstock, Vermont. He envisions a thriving water buffalo dairy industry in Vermont with dozens of farms milking these exotic animals from another land.

The buffalo are milked in a modern double-five tandem milking parlor where the animals are not pressed together as in a typical cow parlor. Slow to let down their milk, water buffalo are "a little more sensitive than cows," said Muller, explaining, "they want their space."

About the size of Holsteins, the buffalo are colored light tan to a very dark brown with long rippled horns that sweep back from their heads. They have a characteristic way of holding their heads, staring out over their noses directly at you as if to ask, "What are you looking at?"

Most of the udder on a water buffalo is held up inside the animal.

They move into the milking parlor and stand somewhat nervously waiting for workers to put on the milking machines, units with electronic meters recording the individual production of each animal. As they are prepped for milking, they are fore-stripped a bit more than is usual for cows.

Muller pointed out that water buffalo are all teats, no udder. "They don't carry their udders the same way as a cow," he said. "Most of the udder is up, inside—they have very tight teat canals, probably has a lot to do with the way they spend all their time in water and wallowing. There's not a lot of correlation between their bag and how much milk they put out."

"Wallowing" refers to the Southeast Asian origins of these animals, where they supply meat, milk, and draft power in rice paddies. They were brought to Italy centuries ago with the return of the Crusaders. There they were milked and in modern times have become well known for the mozzarella cheese and yogurt produced in that country from water buffalo milk.

There are 160 million water buffalo outside the U.S., according to Muller. They produce 16 percent of the world's milk, so he wondered why fresh water buffalo products were not being made in America. After a successful career in laser eye surgery technology, Muller bought a 250-acre farm in Vermont, where he already had a vacation home, and introduced water buffalo to North America.

Star Hill's water buffalo each produce about 14 to 16 pounds of milk a day, or 4,000-plus pounds a year. By breeding his buffalo artificially with frozen semen imported from Italy, Muller expects to rapidly advance the dairy characteristics of the herd. Herd manager Kent Underwood does the breeding at Star Hill, which plans to expand the herd from 70 to 200 milking buffalo this year. The animals are milked twice a day but may go to three times.

Muller is in touch with local farmers and sharing his learning experiences in hopes that others may eventually join in the water buffalo experience. In a University of Vermont publication in 2003, Muller looked ahead to Vermont becoming "buffalo central" someday, with several thousand milking buffalo making a million pounds of cheese a year.

Local farmers have shown a curious interest in the new venture. "At first, I think there was a lot of the expected mocking," Muller said with a bit of humor. "But this ('04) is our third summer, they've made it through two winters, and we're milking and making product." That's what gets dairy farmers" attention.

Water buffalo give small amounts of milk, but with projected prices of over $50 per hundredweight, a little milk can go a long way to pay for easy keepers who can typically milk for 12 years, a length of service uncommon these days among dairy cows.

Water buffalo rarely get sick or contract mastitis. Somatic cell counts are under 50,000 at Star Hill Dairy, and vet bills are low. Minimal vaccinations are required. The buffalo breed seasonally in the fall for a ten-and-a-half month gestation, and they fit easily in traditional cow stalls.

In the milking parlor, a buffalo may sometimes kick, not out of meanness, but with a stubbornness that has probably been bred out of cows. When this happens, the workers calmly strap the animal's legs to restrain them.

Outside the parlor, the buffalo are pussycats. Muller likes their intelligent personalities, saying, "They're not very belligerent animals, and the bulls are very friendly—I mean you can just go ahead and put your arms around them and give them a hug."

Water buffalo dams calve like a dream, with close to zero calving difficulty to date and no twins. Calves at Star Hill are started and raised pretty much like any other dairy calves, in hutches, fed mother's colostrums at birth, and then a high fat milk replacer for about eight weeks until weaning.

Water buffalo are milked in a modern, conventional facility, but cannot be crowded as much as cows.

Muller isn't interested in a meat market for the buffalo, but an expanding number of herds in an area might spur an interest in raising buffalo meat for the Asian immigrant market on the East Coast.

Future buffalo farmers can gain knowledge from Star Hill's trial and error. At first Muller bought farm equipment and raised his own cow feed. Now he has sold most of the equipment and buys all feed locally. No fermented feed is fed in their hay-based TMR which is high in fiber, even straw because it fits the buffalo's special rumen needs. Muller admits they have not yet figured out the precise ration.

Manure handling is unusual at Star Hill. A skid-steer pushes manure out the end of the free stall barn into a long container. The manure is picked up and taken to a composting operation.

The University of Vermont and the Vermont Department of Agriculture went the extra mile, according to Muller, to help get a water buffalo industry off the ground and to get them added to the list of animals whose milk can be used for yogurt.

Fresh water buffalo mozzarella cheese and yogurt (honey, maple, black currant, vanilla, cappuccino and chai) are now sold locally and in some cities, but the demand is clearly greater than the supply, and for Star Hill Dairy the future looks promising.

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