Staying with Yak herders in Zavkhan, Mongolia

In July I was graced with the opportunity to spend 11 days with a Yak herding family at their summer camp along the Zavkhan River in western Mongolia.  I stayed in the Ger, helped with milkings, rounding up the animals, herding on horseback, and milk processing.

Dairying is done here without fences, the animals roaming up side valleys to graze all day then being rounded up at night and brought to a space near the Gers.  The babies are tethered, and the moms hobbled and milked out by hand after the babies have suckled to stimulate milk let down.  The mothers are released but they bed down close to the young and can be milked again in the morning.

The spotted brown and white animal here is a cow/ yak hybrid, and there are many grades of these here and in the Himalaya.  Yaks are bos grunniens and can interbreed with other members of the yak genus such as cattle, water Buffalo, and bison. The 1st generation hybrids produce sterile male offspring and fertile female, allowing the half/half to be further breed into a 75% yak or 75% cattle.  Some of these were important in the past as draft animals.  Yaks milk is high in fat and protein, and has a high amount of minerals with a eggy taste.  

Me wearing the traditional deel, a long robelike jacket, for milking.

A typical Ger, with steel and flesh horses.

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Milk in various pots and states ready for cheesemaking

Visiting Herders and Observing Traditional Mongolian Cheese Making

Summer snaps on  in Mongolia as freezing temperatures and wind of April and May swap out with warm weather and rain.  A dry drab landscape transforms into lush grassland almost overnight in Mid-June.  Livestock animals are everywhere.  As you drive into the countryside you see hundreds of sheep, goats, horses, and cows, and the occasional cluster of Yaks in highlands and Bactrian Camels in southern desert regions.

While driving along with my coworkers one day we pulled up unannounced at the Ger of some people we had never met before.  After their dogs calmed down they invited us in and to my immense pleasure they were in the midst of processing milk.  They were boiling that days milk to be made into Urum the next day.  hot milk is frothed then left to sit and separate overnight, the Cream combining with the foam into a skin.  Then the skimmed milk they had used the day before was made into Byslag, a fresh cheese formed into a rough square in cheesecloth and pressed between boards with a rock on top.  The whey is then made into Eezgii which is ricotta that has small bits of dried meat added and is cooked until the whey evaporates, then dehydrated.

This was the experience I wanted to have in Mongolia, and I was shocked by how easy it was to obtain.  We tasted the best tarag (yogurt) I have had, extremely tart with a drinkable texture.  The Urum was similar to clotted cream, and delicious.  The byslag was pretty bland as it is unsalted.  The cheese making traditions in this country are very utilitarian, they are methods of preserving the bounty of summer grass in forms that will get people through the cold harsh winter.  What is unique and inspiring here is the complete lack of industrial practices and products.  No DVI starter cultures, no rennet, no bulk tanks or sanitizer.  There is an old way of doing things that is preserved here and it is a very unique place to study cheese and dairy in that regard.