dairy yaks in america?

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  • October 4, 2010 at 4:03 pm #42018
    ivy
    Participant

    When I was younger (and before I discovered my love of farming and animals) I lived in Tibet for a year as an English teacher. I enjoyed yak yogurt and yak cheese as well as seeing the herds of yaks and chatting with the herdsmen in my very rudimentary Chinese.

    On and off for the last few months I have been reading about raising yaks and yak cattle crosses on the internet. I wrote to the iyak and vermont yak company websites but never got a response.

    Mostly what I have been trying to figure out is, does anyone in America raise yaks for dairy purposes – either for fun or profit? Do they want to talk to me about it? Are there “dairy” breeds of yaks and “meat” breeds like there are dairy and meat breeds of cattle? And anything else I can learn about yaks.

    Are there any yak dairy farmers out in draft animal power land? Speak up!!

    Cheers
    ivy

    January 13, 2011 at 2:46 pm #62488
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I have 4 yaks, two cows and this year’s heifers. I have been curious as well about their use as dairy animals. I attempted to milk one this summer, but that’s as far as I got. I haven’t been around dairy animals at all, so I have little knowledge of it, but they are certainly lacking the udder and bag of the dairy breeds. I would liken them to goats in that regard. I found her very difficult to get much more than a sample, but like I said I have little knowledge of milking. It is possible a milking machine would make milking much easier. I would love to learn more and try again next year, because my wife and daughters have problems digesting cow’s milk, and who knows they might do just fine with yak milk?
    I found this forum and was hoping to train either my cows or a future team of steers to pull a sled or wagon for the fun of it. I bought my first two 4 years ago for packing and use them elk hunting. This was our first year out in the woods and I was very impressed. I took them places very easily that a very experienced mule man with us said he would have had to do a lot of cutting to get his mules into.
    If you have done much reading on them I am sure you have already heard many of the advantages of them including selling the naturally shed down. I have been able to pay for all my hay just from what I brush out in the spring. In all they are a very neat and mellow animal that I would enjoy to keep learning more ways to take advantage of their usefulness.

    January 13, 2011 at 11:34 pm #62486
    near horse
    Participant

    Hi Main-yak (is that pronounced maniac?),

    I didn’t know that the undercoat of yaks was used in spinning (I guess that’s who’d use it) although I know muskox undercoat called qivuit (spelling) is really fine and valuable. Who do you sell your yak “wool” to?

    Regarding milking – were your heifers nursing at the time you tried to milk? You might have lost a lot to those buggers. Also, one of the arts to milking, like lots of animal husbandry stuff, involves comfort and repetition. Milk let down can be inhibited by stress (even the simple stress of a human grabbing their teats). Persist twice a day for a few days and see if things don’t improve.

    You can milk almost any mammal – from rats to elephants. The amount of milk you get will obviously vary – Mongolian herders milk horses for crying out loud. Give it a chance and good luck.

    BTW – you took yaks into the backcountry? That would turn some heads.

    January 18, 2011 at 7:39 pm #62487
    ivy
    Participant

    Hi Main-yak,

    Cool to know there are other yakkers out there!

    I actually did get to talk to the folks at the VT Yak Company after all and got to see their yaks. They are just for meat, but the farmers didn’t see why one could not be milked by hand or machine.

    Yaks don’t make too much milk – definitely production is similar to a goat. There are alot of papers on the internet out of Qinghai China that talk about yak milking improvement. This one shows some production amounts: http://www.case.edu/affil/tibet/documents/Milkingyakspaper.pdf
    It looked at the yields from a number of different yaks (in other studies) whose daily production ranged from 2.25kg/day (about 1/2 a gallon) to just under 1kg (about a quart) a day. So they are not milk producing machines but I think Near Horse is right, if she’s relaxed and not getting sucked dry by her baby, you should be able to get some out of her.

    Did you have any more luck?

    -ivy

    January 26, 2011 at 7:58 pm #62489
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I only attempted milking the one time, and yes they had calves at their sides. Prior to calving I had rubbed their bellies and teats to get them accustomed to the handling, but little more was done. Eventually I would like to bottle raise a steer and try to milk the mother without a calf at her side. However adding more time commitment with a young family and more projects than I can keep up with already, we’ll see. I had never tried fresh milk before, and yak milk was very sweet and quite good (the very little I got).

    Yes, I took my two yaks into the wilderness in the Salmon river country of ID, and with limited packing skills (but a great instructor and mule man) we managed a 4 day camp about 9 miles in, fortunately not many heads were turned as luckily we didn’t meet a soul on the trail. Unfortunately we met almost as few elk and I am yet to pack meat on them. I have tried to prepare them for that with fresh deer hides in their pen where they are fed.

    I do sell my wool (down actually) and actually still have this year’s on hand, and more to come this spring/early summer. The first year’s down is supposed to be the best.

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