Buffalo milk fills a dairy niche

Buffalo Milk Australia, one of four buffalo farms in Victoria, is a unique business.

Daniel Leimgruber joined the farm in 2019 after owner Mitch Humphries was looking for a new face.

He hasn’t looked back since.

“This was an amazing opportunity,” Daniel said.

“I didn’t really want to be on the farm full-time, and I also wanted something that was paying better than dairy farming, because I’ve been in dairy farming since I was 17.”

Why buffalos?

According to Daniel, Mitch wanted something different.

“He’s a bit of an innovative thinker, you know, he wants to do something different,” Daniel said.

When Daniel came on board, it was April 2020, but COVID-19 wasn’t the biggest issue the farm was facing.

“Initially, it (the pandemic) did look bad, but the milk picked up,” he said.

“The farm was in a pretty bad state when I got here, as the drought had just about finished them off.

“Production was very low, and it took us probably six months to build it back up.”

The 364 hectare property holds between 1100 to 1200 buffalos, consisting of 700 milking buffalos and 400 heifers.

Each of the milking buffalos produces between seven to nine litres of milk per day from two milkings.

Buffalo babies take their time

In terms of aesthetics, buffalos and cows have one obvious difference: horn span.

However, Daniel said their curious nature and placid personality make up for the weapons on their head.

“You only have to watch them when they’re calving, that’s the main thing; otherwise, their horns are not really a problem,” he said.

“They’re very placid, and they don’t fight much between each other.

“They know what their pecking order is, and it’s a lot tighter than cows, so you find they’re a lot more friendly to each other.

“You’ll go out there, it’s very peaceful — they’d be twice as quiet as cows.”

Some of the other main differences are mating, gestation, and birthing.

“I have all our herd bulls, and I don’t do any artificial insemination,” Daniel said.

“It’s a lot more difficult with buffalos because they have a lot more silent heats.”

The farm’s cattle originate from Italy, with the herd numbering 80 in the 2000s when it was located in Queensland.

A buffalo’s gestation period is 300 to 330 days, and if the pregnancy is tough, they can carry the baby longer.

Daniel said they had a preference for an autumn birth and were built with a good pelvis for birthing.

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen probably 2500 calvings, and we’ve pulled maybe five,” he said.

When a calf is born, females are kept as replacements in the herd, while males are sold for campdrafting.

“We sell a fair few bulls,” Daniel said.

“They rear them up for camp drafting, and we have a guy taking them and rearing them up to sell them for meat.”

At the end of their lives, buffalos head to the abattoir, just like dairy cattle.

However, they have a long life before that, with some buffalos at the Koroop farm reaching the age of 15.

Strong builds need nothing fancy

Due to the buffalo’s stockier and more muscular build, the farm had to ensure all equipment was heavy-duty.

“All the bars and gates had to be made bigger, and we had to add concrete under the troughs and put heavy-duty pipes to keep them from jumping in and damaging it,” Daniel said.

“Everything had to be upgraded because they just naturally break everything.”

Daniel said he would never trade in his buffalos for cows, but milking had its challenges.

“I love the ease of buffalos, I hated the health issues of dairy cows,” he said.

“The buffalos are really easy to do, except for milking, because their teats are a lot tighter, which makes them harder to milk.”

In terms of the milk itself, it is higher in both butterfat and protein than cow’s milk.

“We aim for around eight per cent butterfat and about 4.5 to five per cent protein,” Daniel said.

The only supplement he provides is magnesium when the buffalos get temperamental during milking.

When it comes to their diet, well, that is unlike any other.

“I grew massive amounts of pasture, it all looked great, and I was expecting all their production to go right up, but they went straight to straw and hay. They didn’t change one bit,” Daniel said.

“We feed them almond hulls and usually rain-damaged hay.

“I buy all the rain-damaged hay from around the place.

“Anything that dairy cows don’t eat, we feed that to them.”

Daniel described buffalos as masters of roughage, with a gut that “pulls everything out of everything”.

“We don’t feed them any chemicals. We don’t feed them any antibiotics,” he said.

“They’re pretty much as natural as they come, and we find that if you feed them right and treat them right, we don’t have to do a thing.

“We’re a closed herd, so not much goes in and out.”

They love some dam water

When the 2022 floods hit, it wasn’t the buffalos the farmers needed to worry about — they have sealed teat ends built for being in the water.

This in-built swimsuit lowers their risk of mastitis.

“They do get mastitis, but it’s pretty rare, and they do heal themselves a lot better,” Daniel said.

“We actually built dams for them to swim in, and on a 40-degree day, you’ll go up there and find half the herd in the dam, and they’ll be in there for two or three hours.”

The farm’s milk gets picked up twice a week and services three main markets.

Italians use it to make mozzarella; Indian processors make milk, yoghurt and ghee; and the Iraqi market makes kaymak or geymar, a clotted cream.

Their milk is distributed across Australia, specifically to Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Shepparton.

The farm is working on becoming self-sufficient energy-wise in the next few months.

“We already have 45 kilowatts of solar, and we’re going to be doubling that, putting another 50kW of solar and another 100kW of batteries,” Daniel said.

“That will be happening in the next two months, and we will be virtually self-sufficient.”

To check out the video of the farm, you can head to the farm’s TikTok under the username @buffalo.of.australia