A crossbreed, you say?

It’s official!!  We have our first crossbred buffalo at Laos Buffalo Dairy!

We are happy to announce that the Artificial Insemination breeding program that we did back in December 2016, with our esteemed Laos vet Dr. Som, was a success!  

On 2nd November, two of our team members escorted a buffalo and her crossbred baby in from Thinkeo Village.  The buffalos belong to Thinkeo Village Chief, Somlit, who is a very big supporter of Laos Buffalo Dairy, bringing us his buffalo and helping us with some of our building and crazy falang (foreigner) ideas.  

The baby was 2 weeks old when she walked onto our farm.  We are happy to report that she and mum are doing well and seem to be enjoying their new home for the time being.

The AI program at LBD is an ongoing affair at the farm to help increase the genetic mix within the herds in the local villages.  Because most of the males are slaughtered for meat, they don’t have a chance to breed and the genetics in the herds is thinning.  AI is being used to improve genetics and hopefully decrease the calf mortality rate.  With the backing of the government and the help of local farmers, we will keep trying to improve buffalo population.

We hope to report more crossbreeds in the near future.  Stop by the farm and see her in the tourist area.  Keep your eyes open for more reports!

Veterinarian Specialist, AI and Babies Abound!

This has been very busy few weeks at Laos Buffalo Dairy.  Our international veterinarian specialist from Holland, Ronald van Giesson has been here helping us with all of the buffalo and procedures on the farm.  

But that isn’t all!  We were lucky enough to have a world-renowned buffalo specialist from Thailand, Dr. Ohm, come and visit us as well to help with an Artificial Insemination program for the buffalo.  The Laos government has been very concerned with the genetic inbreeding among the buffalo in Laos.  

In 2014, they embarked on a crossbreeding program with swamp and Murrah buffalo to try and “get some new blood” into the herds.  Laos Buffalo Dairy is now facilitating that program on our farm.

Dr. Ohm and Ronald helped us with the program in order to start our next round of Artificial Insemination.  Dr. Ohm came loaded with an ultrasound machine for us to use to see if any of the buffalo were currently pregnant before we started them in the program.  Can we tell you how excited our team was to have a look at the ultrasound pictures and see the babies moving inside the mums?  We even managed to bring the machine to one of the local villages to check some of their buffalo and show the farmers what they were looking at.  We caused quite a stir!

2 Likes, 1 Comments - Laos Buffalo Dairy (@laosbuffalodairy) on Instagram: "Ecography of a baby buffalo! Isn't this exciting? . . . . . . #laosbuffalodairy #luangprabang..."

The rest of the buffalo will go through a regime, similar to what humans would go through, in order to help bring them into heat so we can perform AI on them.  But, as a backup, we will also be putting them together with our bulls.  You can never be too safe!

Laos Buffalo Dairy is now looking into a portable ultrasound machine for the farm so we can keep a closer eye on new babies and buffalo health!  We can then also possibly go into some of the local villages and help out with reproductive health for their buffalo.

There are a lot of new and exciting things happening on the farm!  Keep your eyes open for what comes next! 

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