Everybody's Got a Water Buffalo

Ludo

“Everyone’s got a water buffalo
Yours is fast but mine is slow.
Oh, where we get them, I don't know,
but everybody's got a water buffalo!”

Mom thinks everyone should have a water buffalo. That’s because, she says, Ludo and his kin are so adorable, gentle and sweet.

Mom and Dad got Ludo and his buddy Fezzik from Tom and Shannon Olson of Turkey Creek Farm in Texarkana, Arkansas. The Olsons have hundreds of water

Fezzick

Ludo and Fez arrived last October when they were only a few days old. They lived together in a stall in the dairy goat shelter (that’s right by my buck pen), at least until Fezzik died a few days before Christmas and Ludo was left all alone.

He was sad, so we goats knew we had to be his special friend until he was big enough to live with Aiah the steer.  

Now he’s big and he lives with Aiah but he still likes to stop by and lick us. His nose is wet and his tongue is bumpy, so it feels weird when he does that (yuck!). He sounds funny too, because he doesn’t moo.

If you visit the Philippine Carabao Center website (carabao is another word for water buffalo) and click on About Us on the top menu, you can hear the kind of grunt that Ludo makes. 

Water buffalo aren’t just cute, they also do neat things. Ludo is a steer and Mom is going to ride him some day, like

Ludo growing up

If Ludo was a cow, he’d give lots of yummy, extra high-fat milk. Some people eat water buffalo, too (but Ludo is safe; my mom and dad don’t eat meat).

Mom got interested in water buffalo when she wrote an article for Popular Farming: Cattle called “Alternative Bovidae.”

Now she’s working on an article about them for the January-February 2010 issue of Hobby Farms; she’s going to furnish some pictures of water buffalo, too. She hopes Hobby Farm readers look at their cute faces and fall in love with them the way she did.

Uzzi and I agree: they’re pretty neat—even with those big, wet noses.

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