How to milk a carabao

MANILA, Philippines - First you give the carabao a bath.

Then you get out of the way as she is herded into the milking area.

Next, you wipe her udder clean.

Then you either put a pail underneath to catch the milk as you tug on her udder, or else stick suction caps to each teat and switch on the milking machine.

It helps to make the carabao stay still if you feed her during milking.

The milk - pure, creamy white, as warm as feverish flesh - should start gushing soon enough.

If not, give the udder a lively tug - after making sure you’re positioned away from her backside - and watch the milk flow.

At the Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) in the “science city” of Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, dairy cattle are hosed down and milked twice a day throughout the lactation period, which is about 300 days a year.

Girolando cows - a cross between the Indian Gir breed and the Dutch Friesian or Holstein dairy cow - yield about 20 liters of milk per day.

The carabao, or more precisely, the Indian Murrah breed of water buffalo, yields five liters daily. Our local carabao yields only about 1.5 liters, but I love my own; I still think the native water buffalo, which enjoys wallowing in the mud, yields the richest, tastiest milk in the world.

I wish I could tell you what it was like manually milking my first carabao, but the PCC personnel in charge of milking were all wearing sanitized boots and clothing, while I smelled like cattle dung from several hours of roaming the carabao center. The milking buffaloes, already on their second bath for the day, were cleaner and smelled better than me.

So I contented myself with touching the large glass receptacle for the gushing milk. From that receptacle the milk was sent to a pasteurization area in the same building.

Carabao owners used to simply boil fresh milk before putting it in bottles with compressed banana leaves as stoppers. The bottles were then brought to markets or delivered to households in the cities.

In my childhood we boiled the milk again before drinking, just to make sure. A treat in re-boiling milk is that a film forms on the surface, which I can skim and eat. Boil the milk long enough and the curd starts to form; the milk solids taste like cottage cheese.

In the mechanized system, the heat separates the curd, which becomes our kesong puti or white cheese, or is processed at the PCC into mozzarella. Five liters of milk yield a kilo of curd, which is good for eight to 10 balls of buffalo mozzarella. Each ball is retailed at P120.

By October, the PCC hopes to turn a portion of the facility into a tourist attraction, showing the process of producing milk and cheese. The educational tour will end in a souvenir shop selling dairy products as well as sweets and soap made out of buffalo milk.

Italian know-how was imported by the PCC for mozzarella processing. When I mentioned that the local mozzarella tasted a bit blander than the Italian version, a European told me that perhaps the buffaloes needed Italian grass.

The type of feed can in fact affect cattle lactation and the quality of meat. At the PCC, there are tracts of land planted to sweet sorghum and Napier grass, which make up the bulk of cattle fodder. The buffaloes get other types of feed while being milked.

Napier grass is a high-yielding plant that likes high rainfall, but also grows aggressively during drought. It tolerates frequent cutting and can grow up to 25 feet.

The Girolandos and Murrahs seem to like the combination for their hay.

The boy from Brazil

One overcast Saturday, Brazilian Ambassador Alcides G.R. Prates visited the PCC to inspect buffaloes imported from his country that were being kept under quarantine before dispersal to farmers. About 2,000 Murrahs arrived in Subic Bay from Brazil last Jan. 18; more than 700 have been dispersed so far after repeatedly testing negative, without vaccination, for foot-and-mouth disease or FMD.

The Murrah, a huge beast, seems to have a better disposition than our cranky carabao. The all-black imports nibbled on hay handed out to them by Prates and other visitors. You’d probably be less cantankerous, too, if you are well fed, bathed twice a day, and pampered throughout for two main tasks: producing milk (for the females) and semen for propagation (for the bulls).

Brazil is just the latest source of Murrah for the PCC. The center started importing Murrahs in 1994, with an initial batch of 220 from the United States. From 1995 to 1997, a total of 3,400 more arrived from Bulgaria, in batches of 500.

Apart from producing milk, the buffaloes are meant to meet some of the Philippine demand for carabeef, of which the country imports about half of its needs, equivalent to some 400,000 heads of cattle annually. Carabeef is the main ingredient in corned beef. In 2008, the imports amounted to $712 million.

PCC executive director Libertado Cruz, a reproductive biotechnologist, has successfully used in-vitro fertilization to produce the first test-tube carabao - a cross between the Murrah and the local carabao. The original Murrah embryo was flown in deep freeze from India nearly two decades ago, and the first test-tube calf was born in Nueva Ecija on April 5, 2002.

The date marked the birthday of President Arroyo, so the calf was named “Glory.” In the next few days, more test-tube calves were born and named after former presidents: Fidel, Cory, and of course Erap - Joseph Estrada, who as a senator had sponsored the bill crafted by scientists in 1992 that eventually led to the establishment of the PCC.

Cruz says cross-breeding intends to transform draft animals into producers of milk and meat. He and other scientists believe the country can end its dependence on imports and boost public nutrition through the development of a local dairy industry.

The milking buffaloes are “leased” to farmers without pay, their only investment being the upkeep of the animals. A farmer can net up to P74,000 per buffalo throughout the lactation period. The government finds wholesale buyers for all the milk produced. Cruz said the supply could not meet the demand.

Carabao milk is unusually rich but lower in cholesterol than cow’s milk. A local dairy industry will also be appreciated by expatriates. Foreigners have often lamented the lack of good fresh milk and cream in this country.

Ambassador Prates, who as a boy spent his summer vacations in his grandfather’s wheat farm in Sao Gabriel, remembers breakfasts of bread and butter with milk collected fresh from cows.

In Nueva Ecija, Prates bought white cheese made of PCC buffalo milk. The next morning he slathered the cheese on pan de sal - not the sweetish bun but the original, crusty, salty type, baked in a traditional wood-fired brick oven. Prates’ verdict: “Exquisite.”

The bread with cheese, given by a friend, was downed with red wine. The combination, Prates said, “is biblically correct.”

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The headquarters and national gene pool of the Philippine Carabao Center can be reached through tel. no. (044) 456-0731 to 33, fax no. (044) 456-0730, or by e-mail at pcc-oed@mozcom.com.

The Manila office is at 5F DCIEC Bldg., NIA Compound, EDSA, Quezon City (tel. nos. 926-7707 and 929-6071 local 119, and fax no. 921-3863).