🥛 Bactrian camel milk

Bactrian camel milk is the milk of the two-humped camel, an animal of the cold deserts and steppes of Asia. The Bactrian is the two-humped camel that lives in the cold deserts and steppes of Central Asia: in Mongolia, north-western China, Kazakhstan and neighbouring regions. According to an estimate cited by the FAO, of the world’s roughly 18 million camels only about 2 million are two-humped, so globally there is little Bactrian milk, although it matters to nomadic households.

In protein and lactose content Bactrian milk is close to that of the one-humped camel, but it usually has more fat — about 5% versus 3–4%. According to the FAO, its share of saturated fatty acids is lower than in cow’s milk. As with the dromedary, Bactrian milk contains no measurable β-lactoglobulin, and it has more protective proteins — lysozyme, lactoferrin, immunoglobulins — than cow’s milk.

Two-humped camel milk is drunk fresh but more often soured: in Kazakhstan and neighbouring countries it is made into shubat, and in Mongolia into khoormog. There is noticeably less data on the composition of Bactrian milk in the scientific literature than on dromedary milk, so the figures should be taken as approximate.