Milk

Milk: It is a white, nutrient-rich liquid food produced in the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for infants and newborns, before they are able to digest food.

Evolution of Milk: It gives new-born animals the advantage of ideally formulated food from the mother even after birth, and therefore to continue the opportunity to continue their physical development outside womb.

The rise of the ruminants: The key to the rise of the ruminants is their highly specialized, multichambered stomach, which accounts for a fifth of their body weight and houses trillions of fiber-digesting microbes, most of them in the first chamber or rumen. Their unique plumbing, together with the habit of regurgitating and rechewing partly digested food, allows ruminants to extract nourishment from high-fiber, poor quality plant material. Ruminants produce milk copiously on feed that is otherwise useless to humans and that can be stockpiled as straw or silage. Without them there would be no dairying.

Dairy animals of the world:

Only a small handful of animal species contributes significantly to the world’s milk supply.

The cow, European and Indian the immediate ancestors of Bos Taurus, the common dairy cows, was Bos primigenius, the long horned wild aurochs. This massive animal, standing 6ft/180cm at the shoulder and with horns 6.5inches/17cm in diameter, roamed Asia, Europe and North Africa in the form of two overlapping races, a hump-less European-African forms (Jersey, Guernsey, Brown Swiss, Holsteins) and a humped central Asian form, the zebu. The modern zebu is not as copious as the European breeds, but its 25% richer in butterfat.

The Buffalo The water buffalo is relatively unfamiliar in the west but the most important bovine in tropical Asia. Bubalus bubalis was domesticated as a draft animal in Mesopotamia around 3000 BCE, then taken to the Indus civilization of present-day Pakistan and eventually through India and China. The Arabs brought buffalo to the middle-east around 700 CE, and in the middle ages they were introduced throughout Europe. The most notable vestige of that introduction is the population explosion to 100,000 in the Campagna region in south of Rome, which supplies the milk for true mozzarella cheese – mozzarella di bufala. Buffalo milk is much richer than cow’s milk so mozzarella and Indian milk dishes are very different when traditional buffalo milk is replaced with cow’s milk.

The Yak: Long haired, bushy-tailed cousin of the common cow, Bos grunniens, has beautifully adapted to thin, cold, dry air and sparse vegetation of the Tibetan plateau and mountains of central Asia. It was domesticated around the same time as lowland cattle. Yak milk is subsequently richer in fat and protein than cow milk. Tibetans in particular make elaborate use of yak butter and various fermented products.

The Goat: The goat and sheep belong to the “ovicaprid” branch of the ruminant family, smaller animals that are especially at home in mountainous country. The goat, Capra hircus, comes from a habitat of mountains and semidesert regions of Central Asia. Probably the first animal after Dogs that was domesticated by humans in the region of present-day Iraq or Iran in between 8000-9000 BCE. Due to its omnivorous nature it will consume almost any sort of vegetation, including woody scrub, also its small size and good yield of distinct flavored milk made it a versatile milk and meat animal in marginal agricultural areas.

The Sheep: This animal (Ovis aries) is a close cousin to the goat, it is domesticated in the same region and period, bred for its milk, wool, fat and meat. Sheep were originally grazers on grassy lands and foothills. Sheep’s milk is as rich as buffalo’s milk in fat and even richer in protein, it has been of great value in the Eastern Mediterranean for making in yogurt and feta cheese and elsewhere in Europe for cheeses such as Roquefort and Pecorino Romano.

The Camel: The camel family is fairly different from both the bovids and ovicaprids family and may have developed the habit of rumination independently during its early evolution in North America. Camels are well adapted to arid climates and were domesticated around 2500 BCE in central Asia, primarily as pack animals. Their milk can be roughly compared with cow’s milk and is collected in many countries.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee was a great help as source, a must read for every culinary enthusiast.