A Radically Different Dairy Farm

A buffalo dairy farm that challenges convention and insists on the right of all creatures to co-exist in the landscape.

At Burraduc, a regeneratively managed, coastal buffalo dairy farm in the Myall Lakes district of New South Wales, Elena and Andrei Swegen chose a dairy production model based on the radically different principle of sharing milk with their buffalo calves. The convention in the intensive dairy model dictates that the new-born calf stays with the cow long enough to receive the colostrum that is crucial for providing antibodies and healthy gut bacteria, after which the two are separated so that the cow can give all her milk to the farmer. By contrast, at Burraduc, the buffalo calves aren’t weaned until they are 5–6 months old. Each morning, the buffalo cows walk from the paddock through the on-farm dairy gate to be milked, after which they spend the day with their calves, feeding and ranging together across the paddocks. In the evening, they wander back to the dairy with the calves in tow and allow their babies to be separated and placed into a separate pen together while the cows return to spend the night in the paddocks. In the morning, the cows turn up again for milking and, after giving the farmer a share of their milk, they are reunited with their calves and wander the farm for the rest of the day. Male calves grow alongside their sisters until they begin to display sexual behaviour at around six to seven months, at which point they are sent off to the abattoir and become buffalo veal, which is consumed on the farm and sold to Burraduc customers.

It’s absolutely true that this system of sharing milk results in lower volumes of dairy products for sale and, if you’re producing less volume, then the market value of what you do sell must be high for the business to survive. Which, as always, brings us back to the question of how any one of us measures value — simply by price? Or should we be incorporating environmental, human and animal welfare impact and the nutritional value of a product into the shelf price?

However you choose to answer those questions, at Burraduc, the sharing model produces undeniably successful outcomes. The pastures are abundant, the calves are well-fed and healthy, the buffalo cows are content and living as naturally as possible, their milk is a rich expression of all the genetic and environmental goodness available on the farm and, in Elena’s skilful hands, it becomes award-winning cheese, passing all those minerals and vitamins — the concentrated health and vitality of the farm — to us.

Originally from Moscow, the Swegens are scientists who bred and farmed animals in various parts of Australia before finding the perfect location to grow their Riverine buffalo on the lush, sub-tropical, mid-northern coast of New South Wales. It’s an idyllic landscape abutting a national park and, even in winter and during drought, the paddocks are covered with lush grasses dotted with grand buffalo cows and limpid-eyed, wet-nosed calves. In addition to running a radically different dairy model, the Swegens believe in the importance of species diversity and the right of all creatures to co-exist in the landscape.

Every ecosystem has its predator–prey and, when the system is in balance, each one of these creatures plays an important role in maintaining sustainable populations and preserving the overall health of the system. In Australia, the peak animal predator is the dingo, which for millennia has co-evolved with the landscape and other animals to keep the ecosystem in balance. But dingoes are hunters, so offer them a fenced paddock full of unprotected sheep with no instinctive capacity to protect themselves and the dingoes will, of course, do what comes naturally, much to the ire and distress of the sheep farmers. In response, farmers run aggressive campaigns, poisoning and shooting the dingoes in an attempt to eradicate them.

But, in the face of the increasing evidence that Australia’s native flora and fauna are in deep trouble from the combined impact of introduced species and loss of habitat from conventional agricultural practices, the Swegens argue for a more tolerant and nuanced response. Not only do dingoes have a right to inhabit the landscape as they did for thousands of years prior to the arrival of sheep farmers, but they also have a critical role to play in maintaining ecosystem balance. Additionally, they keep destructive introduced species like foxes, rabbits and feral cats in check. Feral cats, in particular, are much more savage hunters than dingoes and without a predator (like the dingo) to keep them in check, have played a huge part in wiping out many species of small marsupials and native birds.

At Burraduc, the Swegens refuse to shoot or poison dingoes or any other wild animals. Instead, they use Central Asian Shepherd Dogs to keep dingoes at bay and protect their domesticated animals, which include buffalo calves, a few sheep and chickens. As a result, although the farm borders the national park in which the dingoes live, and their neighbours report problems with wild dogs, the Swegens very rarely see dingoes. In addition, there are no destructive rabbits colonising and digging up the farm, and the kangaroos that compete with grazing livestock for available fodder in times of drought give the farm a wide berth.

Of course, it’s more work to choose to run a dairy farm this way. Buffalo are wilder than dairy cows and require careful husbandry, sharing the milk means more movement and handling of animals, and the livestock guardian dogs are another species to manage. But when the system sings, as it does at Burraduc, the overall benefits of this benign approach that fosters and embraces diversity ripple all the way from the farm to us, concentrated in each nutritious mouthful of yoghurt or buffalo cheese.

Images and text from The Ethical Omnivore by Laura Dalrymple and Grant Hilliard (Murdoch Books RRP $39.99). Photography by Alan Benson.