An Introduction to Buffaloes

[River Buffaloes]

Wow!!! thanks for putting this thread on the featured content!!!

 

[Baymule]

He has quite a nice herd of them!

 

[Bruce]

Those buffaloes are more than a little friendly! I wouldn't have guess people in Norway would be raising them.

 

[River Buffaloes]

He has quite a nice herd of them!

We usually keep a herd of 10-12 buffaloes for personal use. We also engage in purchase and sale of buffaloes with urban and suburban dairy farmers.

My home is in a very backwater and rural part of India where fodder is cheap and pastures are abundant. Fodder can be expensive in more developed areas, but the price of milk and milk products are high. The dairy farmers from the more developed areas sell their dry buffaloes and weaned calves to us and we keep them and bring them back to milk and then resale the buffaloes back to those farmers at a profit. So we maintain two herds of buffaloes.

There are animal markets in different villages. Some are organised every week and some are organised every year. We know that on Sunday there will be a market in this village or on Tuesday there will be a market in that village. Some of these markets are very old, there's one market in my State which was around the time of Alexander the Great. Elephants were purchased in this market by Chandragupta Maurya and many of them were gifted by him to Alexander's general Seleucus Nikator who was also Chandragupta Maurya's in-law. He used those elephants in Battle of Ipsus in morden day Turkey where he defeated another of Alexander's generals Antigonus and established the Seleucid dynasty which ruled Persia for like three centuries.

Sorry for the rambling.

 

[River Buffaloes]

Those buffaloes are more than a little friendly! I wouldn't have guess people in Norway would be raising them.

Buffaloes are very friendly animals, but they are not good for large scale industrial farming. They should be kept in more manageable herds. Ten, twenty, thirty perhaps fifty, I wouldn't advice more than that. It depends on how many you can bond with. They are sensitive animals, you cannot hurt them and expect them to obediently give you milk. You can buy one weaned heifer calf and it will bond with your cow, your horse, your dog, you name it. Say you have ten goats and buy a little buffalo, she will bond with the goats and follow them everywhere even if they completely ignore her she may also protect them from predators.

 

[Kusanar]

I wouldn't have guess people in Norway would be raising them.

Weird / Fun fact... the largest population of reindeer are actually in Texas... Not where you would expect to find them either!

 

[River Buffaloes]

Weird / Fun fact... the largest population of reindeer are actually in Texas... Not where you would expect to find them either!

But there's a difference. Buffaloes are mainstream livestock, they are not semidomesticated like reindeer. Reindeer are in process of getting domesticated. They are still not all that different from their wild counterparts. Domestication is a long long process. Domestication must also be organic that is to say decentralised and bottom up. Like we really have no idea who domesticated the first dog or goat or chicken or cattle or pig.

 

[Kusanar]

But there's a difference. Buffaloes are mainstream livestock, they are not semidomesticated like reindeer. Reindeer are in process of getting domesticated. They are still not all that different from their wild counterparts. Domestication is a long long process. Domestication must also be organic that is to say decentralised and bottom up. Like we really have no idea who domesticated the first dog or goat or chicken or cattle or pig.

Understood, but it makes about as much sense for a reindeer which is native to bitter cold to be in a super hot area like Texas as it does for a water buffalo from warm wet areas to be in a cold rocky place like norway, has nothing to do with domesticated or not, just that they are WAY out of their native environments.

 

[River Buffaloes]

Understood, but it makes about as much sense for a reindeer which is native to bitter cold to be in a super hot area like Texas as it does for a water buffalo from warm wet areas to be in a cold rocky place like norway, has nothing to do with domesticated or not, just that they are WAY out of their native environments.

Yes, I understand your point, but a completely domesticated species is widespread. For example chickens were domesticated in South and Southeast Asia from the jungle fowl. They are native to the same areas where buffaloes are native to, but they became widespread in antiquity.

Now obviously chickens mature faster, they reproduce faster and they were domesticated well before water buffaloes so they evolved faster to suit new climates. Just imagine being a person in the Neolithic era, the only metals you have are small amounts of gold, silver and copper, everything else is made of either stone or wood. Now imagine what would be an easier task for you picking up a chicken from the wild or kidnapping a wild buffalo from it's herd? So domestication of buffaloes started late and was a slower process.

Water Buffaloes inspite of their comparatively late domestication were in Mesopotamia by the Bronze Age and they were in Egypt, Anatolia and Greece by antiquity and we don't know when or how they reached in Italy, Romania or Ukraine, but we know that they were there by the Middle Ages. These areas have reasonably different climatess. They were not only present in these different places, they had also evolved into breeds. There are buffalo breeds that developed in all these different regions Turkey, Egypt, Romania and Italy. These breeds were also specialised as dairy, meat and draft breeds.

I love that you brought this fact about reindeer. It opened up a good discussion. Now I must also acknowledge that I don't know anything about reindeer. They are also a very intresting animal. I can see them getting more widespread in a few centuries or perhaps millenniums. Then perhaps we can have them in places like India too.

 

[Bruce]

Weird / Fun fact... the largest population of reindeer are actually in Texas... Not where you would expect to find them either!

Given Santa lives at the north pole, what are reindeer used for in TX? I don't recall hearing that there is a market for reindeer meat or milk. If there is it sure isn't a "thing" in VT and I've never seen it in So. Cal.