Water Buffalo

DAIRY MANAGER KENT Underwood, left, Salisbury farmer Vern Berthiaume and Woodstock Water Buffalo Company owner David Muller stand in Berthiaume’s barn, which now houses water buffalo as well as dairy cows. The water buffalo milk, from which the Woodstock company produces a premium mozzarella cheese and yogurt, may provide a boost to the sagging economics of milk production.

Independent photo/Trent Campbell

By JOHN S. McCRIGHT

SALISBURY — If the wildest dreams of Woodstock Water Buffalo Co. founder David Muller come true scores of Addison County farmers in the not too distant future will look up from their milking and see the large, corkscrew horns of a water buffalo jutting out from the animal in front of him.

The dream isn’t as farfetched as it may sound. Muller’s company already has a herd of more than 500 water buffalo, a distant relation of the Holstein and a native to Southeast Asia. And the company is milking 200 of the exotic animals — 100 right here in Addison County.

One of Muller’s goals is to provide Vermont dairy farmers, struggling to get by selling cow’s milk at $12 a hundredweight, with alternative livestock that is no more expensive to raise and produces milk used in high-return, value-added products. Woodstock Water Buffalo is using its unusual milk to produce cheese and yogurt that sells at several times the price of traditional cows-milk products.

“We’re like the people who are doing organic foods,” Muller said. “Creating premium products is the next step up.”

Five or six years ago, Muller, an entrepreneur who ran a Massachusetts company that pioneered laser eye surgery, was looking for a unique farming opportunity in Vermont when he stumbled upon the notion of milking water buffalo. “They’re easy to keep and cheap to feed,” Muller said. “For Vermont agriculture they seemed like a good fit.”

He got a $1.25 million loan from the Vermont Economic Development Authority and started milking the animals at his Woodstock farm in 2002. With some help from University of Vermont food scientists, Muller’s company began selling Italian-style mozzarella di buffalo and specialty yogurts made from water buffalo milk. The delicacies retail for about $6.99 for a 6 oz. ball of cheese and $1.79 for a 6 oz. cup of yogurt.

“Within six months I realized it could really grow,” Muller said. “The economics are compelling.”

Water buffalo are said to be more docile than typical dairy cows and they live off cheaper food.

“They thrive on mediocre forage,” said Kent Underwood, dairy manager for Woodstock Water Buffalo. “They don’t need an energy-dense diet. They don’t need much grain. They digest fiber more efficiently than cows.”

Also, water buffalo live to be 18-25 years old — three-to-five times longer than a dairy cow.

But what really separates the water buffalo from the cow is what’s in the milk. A cow’s milk has around 3.5 percent fat and 2.5-3 percent protein, whereas milk from a water buffalo is 9.5 percent fat and 5 percent protein, Underwood said. Water buffalo milk is also higher in calcium and lower in cholesterol, according to the Woodstock Water Buffalo Co.

The somatic cell count in the water buffalo milk is 70,000 — about three or four times lower than the count in cows’ milk. This measure, an indicator of freshness, results in fewer cases of mastitis, which means more cows in the herd being milked, Underwood said.

One drawback is that cows produce more milk than water buffalo. A dairy cow will produce between 50 and 70 pounds of milk a day, while a water buffalo will produce 10-12 pounds a day, Underwood explained. But, with the wide swings in the price of cow’s milk and a growing market for buffalo products, milking water buffalo is still more attractive, Muller said.

“They put out less milk but the economics are much better,” Muller said.

The economics of milking cows was not working out for Salisbury farmer Vern Berthiaume. The price he was getting for the milk his cows produced was at the same level it was in the early 1990s. So he responded to a newspaper ad Muller had put in a local paper seeking someone to take a chance on milking water buffalo.

“It was either milk buffalo or milk nothing,” Berthiaume said. “I was getting $11 a hundredweight for my milk.”

Berthiaume sold some of his cows and last month began milking 100 of Woodstock Water Buffalo’s animals at his Shard Villa Road farm. He said he hopes to replace the remaining 100 cows in his barn with another 100 water buffalo.

Under the terms of a deal Muller hopes to recreate across the dairy regions of Vermont, Berthiaume is acting as landlord for the Woodstock water buffalo, which he tends but which are milked by Woodstock hired hands. A Woodstock milk truck stops at the farm every other day.

The company is looking to create more such mutually beneficial arrangements in Addison County.

“We don’t want to build any new facilities,” Underwood said. “There are plenty of milking facilities in Vermont already.”

Even before Berthiaume brought in the milkers this summer Woodstock had begun to leave footprints in the county. Dennis Mueller at the Arnold Bay Farm in Panton is raising 80 water buffalo heifers for the company and Roger Stowe in New Haven has 140 Woodstock heifers.

SIMILAR TO COWS

In appearance, the water buffalo on Berthiaume’s farm aren’t all that dissimilar from dairy cows. They weigh about the same as a mature Holstein — 1,300-1,500 pounds — and are milked using the same machinery. Buffalo are slightly shorter than cows but most have a dark coat and big dark eyes similar to some breeds of dairy cow. Gestation is 10-and-a-half months, about a month and a half longer than cows’.

Water buffalo originated and are still most widely used in a swath of Asia that runs from China south and east to India. But they are also not uncommon as a farm animal in other parts of the world, notably, Italy, where their milk is prized in the making of authentic mozzarella di buffalo cheese.

The first water buffalo were imported into the U.S. in the 1970s by the University of Florida. But they never caught on as a commercial dairy cow replacement.

“You’ll probably never see our milk on the shelf of the grocery story because people know what they want milk to taste like,” Underwood said.

But Muller’s cheese is the first Italian-style buffalo mozzarella made in the U.S. and it has found a niche at specialty shops on both coasts. Looking for other products beyond the cheese, Muller cooked up a batch of yogurt in his kitchen using the buffalo milk. The result was a product that, since it is higher in fat than yogurt made with cow’s milk, has a creamy richness that also commands a higher retail price.

Although Muller plans to stick to milking his water buffalo, he said the animal’s meat, like that of American bison, is lower in fat and cholesterol than typical cow’s meat. He knows of a rancher in Ferrisburgh raising water buffalo for beef.

LONG-TERM GOALS

Muller, 55, is growing his herd as fast as he sensibly can, but the simple mathematical limits of increasing the size of the herd means he will be working for years before water buffalo could have a significant impact on Vermont agriculture. Muller says he would like to be milking 1,500-2,000 water buffalo within five years and hopefully to see 10,000, maybe even 25,000 head of water buffalo in Vermont within his lifetime. Currently there are about 152,000 dairy cows in the state, according to the Agency of Agriculture.

But, with the price of water buffalo about the same as the price of dairy cows, and Woodstock using the milk to make value-added products for national distribution, Muller thinks there will be appeal for some Addison County farmers to join the herd.

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