Camel milk farmers paving the way for export industry

With a background farming dairy cows, they changed trajectory with the belief their future with cow's milk was too uncertain to continue pursuing, so in 2014 they established The Camel Milk Co Australia.

"When we started in 2014 there was no market for camels, we were the laughing stock of our region for quite some time," Mrs Williams said.

Beginning with only three camels, they've since become Victoria's first licenced camel milk producers and now their Kyabram farm is home to 500-plus camels, sprawling over 200 hectares.

"We've really had to show initiative in every single thing we've come to, like finding out who would be licencing us, we've just had to keep pushing," she said.

"Sometimes I think being the first one is a huge feather in your cap, but at the same time it's costly and it's hard work.

"When we first started to get up and going it wasn't seen as a dairy business and camels were seen as a pest, or even a pet, so it's been interesting.

"A lot of our cash flow has been our capital to keep us going."

Determined to persevere, despite heavy regulations and a lack of reliable literature in Australia, Mr and Mrs Williams became a licenced camel dairy in 2015.

"That was one of our biggest hurdles," she said.

"We only became licenced under Dairy Food Safe Victoria in 2019, so for four years we contacted the Department of Agriculture, got pin balled for six months and we couldn't find anyone to licence us to sell milk so in the end we fell under our local council."

Mrs Williams explained that prior to this they were regularly audited by their local council's food safety inspectors since they didn't fall under another category.

"Our food safety program had to look exactly like a big dairy factory, so we were technically a higher class and I did sometimes feel a bit sorry for the health officers to come out and audit us, but they did a really good job," she said.

"It felt like we'd been pushing for a few years and all of a sudden we got a phone call just before Christmas that it was going to pass in Canberra, the bill was passed and all of a sudden we were under the Dairy Food Safety Victoria."

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In their niche industry, Mr and Mrs Williams experienced a lot of trial and error, learning early that unlike cows, a camel calf must be kept with its mother for the duration of the 8-18-month lactation length to prevent her milk drying up.

"We'd always enjoyed a life on the land so it wasn't too hard for us to jump ship from milking cows to camels," Mrs Williams said.

"Being dairy farmers we'd worked around large animals for some time, but we hadn't worked with camels so we did a camel handling course with Peter Hodge."

Both with advanced diplomas in agriculture, they rely frequently on their backgrounds to navigate through milking best practices, housing their camels and disease prevention to ensure optimal health of their herd.

"You can't use any intramammary treatments for camels, and there's no registered drugs for camels in Australia either, so a lot of vets will prescribe a drug off label but it can't be used within the milking system which has been a huge one for us," Mrs Williams said.

"Navigating a camel that has mastitis, we'll segregate her milk so it doesn't go into the factory but other things we do is keep the baby with her that whole time to continuously suck out the infection."

Their love for camels originated when they met in the Northern Territory where the world's largest camel population resides.

"I know a lot of people see them as pests but we are sitting on a really good recourse here," she said.

With ongoing studies into the benefits of camel milk, they've previously worked with researchers at The University of Melbourne and unveiled a skincare line to include overseas export.

"Every week and everyday is a new challenge and I love launching our new products," she said.

The milk itself is a pure white in colour and has a slightly different flavour to cows milk, described by a young taste tester as a similar taste to leftover cows milk in a bowl of rice bubbles.

Their products can be found online at www.camelmilkco.com.au or at various markets and boutique stores across Australia.