Buffalo farmers add value by creating dairy products, selling meat
A farming couple are adding value to their unusual herd by creating their own dairy products and starting meat sales.
NORTH-West Tasmanian couple Phillip Oates and Sheridan Lee have established a value-adding business using what could be the state’s most unusual milking herd.
With high-fat milk and lean meat, buffaloes are proving to be the ultimate dual-purpose animal.
The couple run a large herd of buffalo on their property at Preston where they have established their Tasmanian Buffalo business.
After years of work, they have now built an on-farm cheese-processing factory, which is run by Ms Lee.
Mr Oates said buffalo milk was ideal for cheese production because of its high fat content.
Buffalo milk has a butter fat content of between 10 and 12 per cent.
“It’s fairly sweet and a lot thicker than normal cow’s milk and has more butter fat than cow’s milk,” Mr Oates said.
Mr Oates said thanks to the higher fat content, it took about 3.5 litres of buffalo milk to make one kilogram of cheese, compared with about 8 to 10 litres of cows’ milk required for the same amount.
The couple are now making a range of cheeses, including mozzarella and ricotta, along with other products such as yoghurt and they are also selling fresh milk.
Up until the coronavirus restrictions came into force the couple were selling their products through local farmers markets. Now they are selling at the farmgate and are also setting up an online sales system.
Mr Oates has owned buffaloes since the first commercial herd was imported into Tasmania back in 1997.
With a large frame size and sometimes an attitude to match, Mr Oates said buffaloes could require careful handling, but generally they were easy to manage.
The exception are the bulls, whose natural territorial instincts means they must be kept totally separate at all times.
“Basically it’s a family instinct,” he said.
“Once the bulls get to about two and a half years old the older bulls will kick the younger bulls out of the herd.”
As well as value-adding the milk at the farm, the couple are now also selling buffalo meat from their herd.
Mr Oates said on average their mature cows weighed about 800kg.
Any bulls not being kept for breeding are castrated and then grown out for meat production as steers.
On average the steers are turned off at about 18 months of age and dress out at between 200kg and 400kg.
Mr Oates said the buffalo meat was lean and quite different from beef.
“It’s really low in fat and it doesn’t have fat through the meat like beef.”
Mr Oates said they had had interest from people keen to purchase buffalo meat from their herd.
The meat itself is lean but it’s not like kangaroo, he said.
“It’s a little bit different in flavour to beef and it’s more dense, so it cooks quite quickly.”
Because of the current reduction in sales due to the virus restrictions, the couple are not milking the cows as often as they normally would.
Unlike normal milking cows, the buffalo calves are left on the cows and the milk is shared.
Mr Oates said this meant that recently the calves in their herd had been getting more milk than usual.
Buffalos have a gestation period of 11 months.
Mr Oates said it was not uncommon for buffalo cows to continue milking up to a couple of weeks before they have their next calf.
MORE TASMANIAN COUNTRY
Milk record broken as industry shines
Tasmania’s dairy farmers are surging to new heights, hitting a milk production record as the industry remains Tasmania’s highest value commodity.
It’s the people who make the paper
After four decades, the last edition of Tasmanian Country will be arriving in mailboxes across the state today.