Camels’ milk is an udder delight if you have got the hump with cows
Print Edition
Fed up with cow, goat or soy milk? Try something new — camel milk.
Before dawn, Sangdeg, 45, walks into a camel pen in the desert of north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and gently calls the name of a 9-year-old Bactrian female.
It is time for Sangdeg’s milking work to begin.
For camel farmers like Sangdeg, camels are not only used to carry tourists but also to produce milk.
“My family used to raise camels only for their fur and meat, their milk was only used to feed their cubs,” said Sangdeg whose family has raised camels for generations.
Things changed earlier this year.
He and many other farmers started selling raw camel milk to a local processing plant to earn extra money.
Every midnight, he and other workers spend around two hours milking 25 female camels. Then he drives the fresh milk to the company named Shamozhishen or “God of Desert” in English.
“The milk produced by each camel earns me around 6,000 yuan (US$862) a year, while its fur earns only several hundred yuan,” Sangdeg said.
Established in 2014, Shamozhishen is the largest camel milk processor in Alxa Right Banner and the first of its kind in the autonomous region.
In the company’s plants, raw milk is made into processed milk, milk powder, milk soap, and other skin care products.
The products will be sold to customers across the country by more than 600 agents.
Ran Qiwei, manager of the company, said his plant is planning to develop pharmaceutical products by extracting insulin from camel milk.
“Camel milk is nutritious and helps strengthen people’s immune systems,” said Zhang Wenbin, vice director of Inner Mongolia Institute of Camel Research, an institute focusing on camel genomics and camel pharmaceutics.
“Camel milk also caters to the more adventurous customers who want to try a different kind of milk.”
With the rise of the camel milk industry, the number of camels in Alxa League which administers Alxa Right Banner has surged from around 50,000 in 2003 to about 120,000 last year.
This accounts for one-third of the country’s total. But this is still far from enough.
“Our plant has a production line that can process 20 tons of camel milk every day. The amount of raw camel milk falls far short of what we need,” Ran said.
The Inner Mongolia Institute of Camel Research was established in Alxa League in 2014. Scientists from the institute have researched how to boost camel milk production. “We are doing research on camels’ functional genes and trying to develop new varieties of Bactrian camels that can produce more milk,” Zhang said.
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