June 5, 2007

Thai farmers urged to breed water buffaloes for milk

Thailand's Agricultural Land Reform Office is encouraging farmers to raise water buffaloes for their milk apart from meat or for paddy fields ploughing.

The department's secretary-general Anant Phusitthikul confirms 200 buffaloes had already been distributed to farmers in the Nong Mai Kaen Cooperative in Chachoengsao province. All the buffaloes are Murrah, an Indian breed.

The government also helped the farmers set up the Murrah Dairy Co to produce fresh milk, yoghurt and mozzarella cheese.

About twenty buffaloes have already yielded 90 to 110 kilograms of milk daily which is sold to local dairies at for Bt80 per kilogram, Bt11-Bt12.50 more than cow's milk.

Farmers had already cross-bred the native breed with the Murrah to raise a buffalo that survives better in the Thai climate and produces milk for 270 days longer than the local breed, says the province's land-reform officer Deja Wilawan.

The Livestock Development Department said buffalo milk is highly nutritious with up to 4.5 percent protein by weight as against the 3.2 percent for cow's milk and 3.1 for goat's milk. The department added buffalo milk contains 58 percent more calcium than cow's milk but has lower cholesterol, about 0.65 milligrams per gram.

The protein content is also suited to produce cheese. It takes only five kilograms of buffalo milk to make one kilogramme of cheese, as opposed to eight kilograms of cow's milk.

The breeding of buffaloes has also boosted the hay and manure markets.

Note: US$1 = 32.71 Thai baht