The Donkey Dairy in Magaliesburg, which Farmers Weekly describes as the only farm of its kind in South Africa, has added freeze-dried donkey milk capsules, sulphate-free haircare and baby lotion to a range that for about 10 years consisted of milk and creams.
Owner Jesse Christelis left Johannesburg in 2011 to farm vegetables and sheep. When jackals attacked his flock, he learned donkeys guard other livestock and saved two jennies, Betsie and Saartjie, from an equine abattoir. The herd has since grown by another 145 animals.
The move into powder came from logistics. Christelis bottled and froze the milk to avoid plastic, but sending it across the country under cold chain was expensive. Frozen milk keeps for six months, but must be used within three days of opening. The pandemic made things harder when he could not supply stockists during lockdown, and he began offering accommodation on the farm to bring visitors in.
He rejected spray drying because the heat, he says, denatures the milk and strips out probiotic properties and the enzyme lysozyme. A trip to Europe led him to buy freeze-drying equipment, which now lets the farm put the powder into 480mg capsules.
Christelis makes wide health claims for the capsules, based on his own trials rather than published research, and we do not repeat them here. His business plan is clearer: he wants to scale to about 500 donkeys over the next three years. Calm animals are part of that, he says. "If donkeys are stressed and they don't have oxytocin, they won't release their milk, even if their udders are full."
Jesse Christelis spoke to Eugene Goddard of Farmers Weekly South Africa.
Photo: Lilly M / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Farmers Weekly South Africa
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