In Laos, water buffalo are considered "savings books for times of need". If someone has to go to the hospital, if rice runs out or if a wedding is coming up, you sell a buffalo. But most are weak and malnourished. Parasites and diseases affect the ruminants. Innovative feed blocks could improve the situation.
A young team of animal specialists wants to feed the buffalo in Laos - with food blocks developed by Australian scientists. With their help, the buffaloes can be adequately fed all year round for the first time, they become healthier, put on more meat and produce up to 30 percent more milk. So far, however, this has not been used at all in Laos, milking is unknown here. At the same time, many children in Laos are chronically malnourished, with consequences for their entire lives. Enriching the children's diet with water buffalo and goat milk could mean quick help and every day counts. The window of opportunity to avert irreversible damage from malnutrition is narrow.
Milk from water buffalo cows and, more recently, from goats is used in feeding programs, including in the border region with China, where generation after generation of villagers live in poverty and malnutrition affects almost half of the children. With knowledge and free blocks of feed for the cattle farmers in their luggage, the animal specialists teach the villagers how to milk their animals and how to prepare simple milk dishes. There is hardly anything in which the cultures of the world differ so much as in food. What tastes good and what the palate perceives as not tasty is passed down through generations - a huge challenge for the team. Can the agricultural avant-gardists get the villagers used to the new taste in food?
