🥛 Mithun milk

Mithun milk is the milk of the mithun, a semi-domesticated bovine of the mountain forests of north-eastern India and neighbouring countries. The mithun, or gayal (Bos frontalis), is a semi-domesticated bovine of the mountain forests of Northeast India, Myanmar, Bhutan and Bangladesh. For local peoples, for example in the Indian states of Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh, the mithun is first of all a symbol of prosperity and a source of meat rather than a dairy animal. Even so, mithuns and their crosses with cows are milked in some areas.

Mithun milk is very concentrated. According to a study by the National Research Centre on Mithun (Mech et al., 2008), fat content over the lactation ranges from about 7.7 to 10.3% and rises towards its end, protein is about 6.3–6.8% and lactose about 4.4–4.6%. That is 2–3 times fattier than cow’s milk and roughly twice as high in protein.

The high concentration of nutrients comes with very low yields: in the same study a female gave on average 0.9 to 1.5 kg of milk a day, most of it in the first three months of lactation. So mithun milk mostly goes to the calves, and people get only small amounts for home use.