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ASHBURTON
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Tuesday, April 1, 2014
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BY MICHELLE NELSON MICHELLE.N@THEGUARDIAN.CO.NZ
Revelations that cows on a Mid Canterbury dairy farm are producing nutritionally-dense flavoured milk may have a huge impact globally. About 20 per cent of Chris Ford’s 1000-head herd in the Dromore district has been producing flavoured milk for several weeks, but the secret has been closely guarded until today. Mr Ford has been working on the project with Professor Paul de Legg and a team of scientists from the Dutch research company Dairyfruit.com, with the aim of producing chocolate, banana and strawberry flavoured milk directly from the cow. Professor de Legg was in Mid Canterbury this week to see the fruits of his work direct from the udder. He said the project began in the Philippines, using bananas. “We wanted to see how the enzymes in the bananas that make them such a good carbohydrate, would react with the milk protein, and we discovered
Chris Ford milks one of the Dairyfruit cows.
PHOTO DONNA WYLIE 300314-DW-279
PHOTO 300314-DW-237
it flavoured the milk,” he said. The ‘bovinana’ milk appears to have additional health benefits for humans, and trial tests on athletes are showing promise in the functional food market, Professor de Legg said. But according to Mr Ford the cows prefer the cocoa-rich diet. He has also noticed an improvement in the health of the Dairyfruit cows, and is consid-
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Chris Ford and his son Alex test the flavoured milk produced by cows on their Dromore farm.
ering introducing more animals to flavour-specific diets, and has a number of new silos installed to store the flavoured stockfeed. The logistics of milking four separate herds and cleaning down the shed in between each flavour have proved time consuming but Mr Ford said the flavoured milk cows are only milked once a day, and his staff now have systems in place to
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manage the process. Trials on producing other flavours are on the drawing board. Mr Ford is keen to try kiwifruit, however the scientists are concerned the acidity of the fruit will result in curdling. Blueberry flavoured milk is likely to come online in the spring. A latte flavour was also trialled early on in the project;
however Mr Ford said his Mid Canterbury cows had rejected the coffee-flavoured feed. “I think I would have to bring in cows from north of the Bombay Hills to make that flavour work,” he said. He is looking at buying cows from the Auckland region. “If we can get the right stock, we will launch the latte flavour on April 1 next year,” he said. Ph 03 307 7900 to subscribe!
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