THE buffalo at Roger Haldane's Yambuk property aren't your run-of-the-mill variety, writes ANDREW MOLE

The image is incredibly arresting.

A dairy yard, packed to the gills. With buffalo.

More horns than the brass section of a philharmonic - and so, so much bigger.

These lumbering giants were not lost, nor were they in temporary quarters on their way to the knackery.

They were simply waiting their turn to be milked.

To produce, in particular, mozzarella cheese. Fair dinkum mozzarella cheese, that unless it is made with buffalo milk is as genuine as a three-dollar bill.

But these are not your common buffalo.

No, these are riverine buffalo, a significant step up the genetic ladder from the riff-raff water buffalo laying waste to so much of the Northern Territory's ecology.

And buffalo with a purpose far beyond plodding along in front of ploughs and carts.

It all comes down to just two chromosomes, the difference between riverine and the rest.

That little genetic jangling means the riverine is capable of producing three, even four, times the milk and making it a viable concern in the milking shed.

Shaw River Buffalo Cheese, the boutique end product of the aforementioned herd in the dairy yard, is a well-known brand among the chardonnay set.

But much less known, or understood, is what, in the first place, brought a bucket load of buffalo to Yambuk, via Denmark and several points in between.

Or all the money, commitment, and trial and error which has gone into developing Australia's only viable large-scale buffalo dairy herd.

Roger Haldane, has the answers. He and his late brother, Clyde, were there at the beginning, when the (mostly) Bulgarian and Italian buffalo were loaded on to a plane in Denmark (for export protocol reasons) and took off for quarantine and, eventually, Australia.

The story is riddled with curiosity.

Bulgaria.

Surely the only connection with buffalo is they both start with the letter B? Not so, said Roger.

Riverine buffalo were spread from India as far west as Italy. For example, he said there were 120,000 females happily munching away in the paddocks around Naples, where the Campania region was home to the mozzarella industry.

"Before technology, mozzarella was a strictly local cheese but as refrigeration improved, Italians spread it across the world," Roger said.

"First it was Europe, then the US and then Australia.

"Today we produce the mozzarella as well as eight other types of cheese and yoghurt."

Meanwhile, back in the yard, the coarse-haired leviathans are slowly making their way through the converted dairy which accommodates their massive heads and headgear.

Roger runs the business with his daughter, Thea, and son, Ewan, while sibling Amy is in charge of the Icelandic horses.

He said it took a lot of trial and error to come up with the most efficient way of managing buffalo in a milking environment.

First tries on a standard side-on European system flopped, and the inability of squeezing the heads into a 90-degree milker met with little more success.

"We had to nut a lot out, and it took us 10 years to come up with the system we use today," he said.

"I am not in a rush to give much more away because I don't see why anyone should easily benefit from the work we have done."

Which is an ironic approach, because that is exactly what Australian farming has done as far as the Haldanes are concerned.

Roger and Clyde have been pioneers of, or the first investors in, innovations such as alpaca (Clyde spent months at a time in South America for years), angora and boer goats, Icelandic horses and Karakuls, Australia's first fat-tailed sheep.

And the Haldane family went to South Australia back in the 1950s to help launch the massive tuna industry out of Port Lincoln. But the buffalo have been a project long in the making.

"We have seen half a load out of Denmark slaughtered for health reasons, others held up in quarantine for ages and because we have the only ones here, it has taken a long time to build the herd to the 600-odd it is today," Roger said.

"While a buffalo will only milk between a third and a half of a traditional dairy cow, their milk is streets ahead in butter fat, going as high as 10 per cent instead of just over 3 per cent.

"Like sheep and goat milk, buffalo has no keratin, so it already contains vitamin A in digestible form, which cows don't."

Bulls are run with the cows year-round, and the herd is equally divided between Yambuk and Port Lincoln, where the focus is on beef for the Northern Territory market.

"Port Lincoln has the only abattoir in the region which is registered for buffalo and will do a small kill," Roger said.

"Our herds are both pure riverine, and are run under the same rules as mainstream livestock, with property identification codes and (National Livestock Identification System). However, they are a restricted species and you need a permit to keep them."

Buffalo are also pregnant longer than a cow - 10 1/2 months - but have the advantage of not having gone through hundreds of years of breeding manipulation.

Roger said that means they are good calvers and good mothers.

"I describe them as a natural animal, which the modern cow - beef or dairy - is not," he said. "Unlike other grazing animals they also do well on poor-quality feed, which gives them another advantage."

The buffalo business may be booming - the Haldanes supply 40 restaurants in Melbourne alone with their products - but Roger quickly puts it into perspective.

He said India was still the world's biggest milk producer and two-thirds of that output comes from buffalo.

"But none hits the export market, understandably it is all needed for the domestic market," he said. "Here in Australia we are very small scale, an industry dependent on the enthusiasm of the people in it.

"And buffalo cheese is not a commodity like mainstream milk and cheese, it is a niche product and right now the market is right about matching our production capacity. If we were to go the next level down in the market there is no way we could compete on price or against substitute products."

So after 16 or so years it is all coming together. And after all the things the family have dabbled in, Roger has probably earned a break.

Whoops. Did he mention the flock of Gotland sheep they have introduced?

That's another story.