great lakes dairy sheep symposium - the Department of Animal ...

Introduction
MILKING EWES IN THE CENTER OF MEXICO
Javier Pérez Rocha Malcher
“Santa Marina” Farm
El Marques, Querétaro, México
Santa Marina Farm is a medium-sized farm providing organic products such as cheese and
lambs. Our 350 ewes graze all the year thanks to our great weather and 40 hectares of irrigated
fields.
History
Santa Marina farm is located 200 km north of Mexico City, at 2000 meters above sea level in
a semi-desert region. This place has been in our family since early 1980´s, and we grew
vegetables until 2003. Then we started to milk ewes. It’s important to note that we never had
ewes before, but after my attendance at the 2003 Great Lakes Dairy Symposium at Cornell
University at Ithaca, New York, we decided to start our milking operation. The tradition for
sheep in Mexico is only for meat, and that’s why it was so difficult to start. There are only three
other ewe milk producers in all Mexico; one of them started in 1996 and the other started in
2002.
First we started with 60 black-faced cross ewes and a pure breed East Friesian ram. After
that, we met a person who studied cheese making in France and had a little factory near our farm.
He had experience in making many types of cheeses including aged cheeses from ewe milk. We
started to milk the ewes right away, but the success was far away. These ewes produced, at that
time, 200 milliliters per day per ewe, and it was very disappointing. Two months later one of the
guys who milked crossbred ewes (3/4 Friesian, 1/4 St. Croix) quit milking and sold his 200 ewes
to us.
These ewes performed better and had a longer lactation (250 days) with 600 milliliters per
ewe per day on average. At the same time, we started to learn how to make cheeses. We
continued to deliver all the milk to our friend in his cheese factory for him to produce the cheeses
while we kept learning how to produce our own cheese. Right away we started to sell cheeses in
many cities near ours including Mexico City. By the end of 2004, we had our own small cheese
factory, and we got our organic certificate. This certificate gave us a bigger market to increase
our sales.
Right now we participate a lot in fairs and have many buyers looking for our cheeses. People
are starting to be interested in buying ewes and rams to start milking.
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