Camelicious

A certain mom in our homeschool group who has lived here far longer than us,  has been trying to arrange a tour of the world's only large scale camel dairy for the past 2 years.  This morning her desire was realized and we got to reap the benefits as well.

Have you ever milked a camel?  Well, neither have I, but we now have bottles of camel milk in our fridge.  You can take your pick of flavors from plain, chocolate, strawberry, date, saffron, or nasty (that last one has a green lid and I think it’s soured milk--on purpose, but the kids didn’t know that until after they sampled it and almost died.)

  

The farm currently has 3,000 camels, but are increasing their herd? by 200-300 each year.  They have the facilities to care for up to 10,000.  They are not free ranging, but are housed on a 15 acre facility.  They are fed primarily green hay, with carrot treats.  That's a lot more food than they would find on their own in the area.

Some camels only give a liter of milk a day, some can give up to 20, but the average is 7 liters a day.  That is less than 1/4 as much as a cow.  Camels are only milked once a day.  They can produce milk for about 500 days after their babies are born.  Their babies are extremely cute. 

Each camel's milk is tested and if there are any problems (such as residual antibiotics from a camel that had been sick or hurt) they throw out that batch of milk.

The milk only has a shelf life of 4-5 days, so currently it is only sold in this region.  They have a greater demand than they can currently supply.  Union Co-Op is the only store in Dubai that sells it, and a few moms said that the camel milk shelf is often empty.  They also make camel chocolates.  They are experimenting with yogurt and ice cream.

Jess bravely asked our guide about procuring some camel hair, but was told they do not sell camel hair and camels don't shed either.  Sorry grandma Terry.

These girls are just finished with milking.

It doesn't translate well to still photography, but that camel out in front was RUNNING!

We were all given a few carrots to feed to any of the moms.  None of the babies were tempted to try. 

A few of the older babies were frolicking   I have only seen ponies dance around playfully like that.  It was so cute. 

This baby is only 3 days old!!

They gave us booties to put over our feet before walking around the camel pens. They kept our feet nice and clean for going into the milking house.

This did not turn out well.  I didn't realize the glare was so bad until I got home.  This is looking down at where the camels are milked, but it was currently empty of camels, and being cleaned.  

Just as we were finishing the tour, it started POURING rain.  Most people stayed inside waiting for it to stop.  Jess ran out and started dancing and splashing.  She got completely  soaked.  Good think I had a couple towels in the car.

Each family was given a gift bag on the way out.  Don't know what happened to BOTH bottles of chocolate milk....  "Don't try the green lid!" advise the kids.

This is Isaac trying the Saffron.  Not his favorite either.  But he bravely sampled each variety.  He is the daredevil at our house for trying things.  

I ran into Spinney's for a couple things on the way home.  During the 10 minutes I was in the store, the sky changed.  I came out to find the world was yellow.  The kids thought it was orange.  It may have rained buckets, but there is still tons of dust in the air.  Isaac used the camera to take a few pictures.

And as the final climax of the morning, we found some big puddles driving home and made huge sprays!