Megan and Chris Williams brought a bit of Australia’s outback to Victoria when they started a camel dairy business last November.
A year on, Ms Williams said their venture was exceeding their expectations – they cannot grow their herd nor production quick enough to meet the growing demand for fresh camel milk.
She grew up in the Goulburn Valley and met her now husband, who’s from Wales, in Alice Springs, where their interest in camels began.
They moved back to Victoria and share-farmed with her parents. They got their own 43-hectare farm at Kyabram to run heifers on, and although they enjoyed traditional dairying, they wanted to do something innovative.
Inspired by TV segments and articles about camels, the couple did more research and were impressed by camel milk’s health benefits – it has more protein, vitamin C, B6, iron, calcium, magnesium and potassium and less lactose than bovine dairy milk. As such, some people who have trouble with bovine cows’ milk can better digest camel milk.
“We also crunched some figures and looked at existing infrastructure and how we could alter or add to it to suit camels,” Ms Williams said.
The Williams first bought two adult camels and a calf that were already quiet to see how they went and what they needed to learn and construct. There is only one other licensed camel diary in Australia – in Queensland – so the Williams work things out by trial and error.
Because camels need their calves with them to express milk, Mr Williams has built a long race that the camel cows stand in single-file. The race has windows for calves to put their heads through and a window on the other side through which the milker can access the udder.
They milk twice a day with a portable milking machine. There are eight regular milker camels and six in training, in a herd of 40 head. Camels only let down milk for 90 seconds to two minutes, but in that short burst let down 0.5-3 litres, with the Williams sometimes getting up to 6L per camel per day. The camels’ lactations are 400 to 600 days. Such is the labour requirement, the family has hired two full-time staff.
“It takes four hours a day for four weeks to train a camel to milk,” Mr Williams said.
“We’re drought proof dairy farmers; in summer a camel drinks 20L of water and a bovine cow 160L”
The transition from an arid to a milking diet is carefully managed over four months.
They are now producing more than 210L a week, of which about 80 per cent goes to Melbourne health food shops. They also make camel milk soap and lip balm.
The energetic couple have met every challenge from taking in wild camels to marketing and distribution – while raising three boys under three years-old.
