🥛 Llama milk

Llama milk is the milk of the llama, a domestic animal of the Andes belonging to the camel family. The llama is a domestic animal of the Andes, a South American relative of camels. It is raised for wool and meat and used as a pack animal; according to the FAO, llamas have historically not been bred for milk, and there is little information on the composition and consumption of their milk.

Judging by the available data, llama milk is sweet: it is high in lactose (about 6%), has about 2.7–4.7% fat and more protein than cow’s milk. As in camels, no measurable amount of β-lactoglobulin has been found in llama milk. Its fatty acid profile, according to the only study available to the FAO, is comparable to that of cow’s milk.

The FAO calls llama and alpaca milk an underused food resource for people in the mountain regions of South America. In practice llamas are hardly ever milked: the young get all the milk, and the female has a small udder and low yields. Like other camelids, the llama has a three-chambered stomach and digests coarse fodder much like a ruminant.