The Care of the Ordinary Buffaloes
The ordinary buffaloes, or putiir, of a village are looked after and milked by the males of the village; by those who in Toda terminology are perol, or ordinary men, as compared with those who have been ordained to one of the sacred dairy offices.
When the people rise in the morning, the buffaloes are [[53]]released from the pen, or tu, in which they have been enclosed for the night, and the animals make their way at once to the place where they are accustomed to be milked, the irkarmus. At the same time, or a little later, the calves are released from their enclosure, the kadr, and each calf runs to its mother. The milk of the previous night is churned in the interior of the dwelling-hut, usually by one of the youths of the family. In the dairy one man has to carry out all the dairy operations, and here the churning is always finished before the milking begins; but in the case of the ordinary buffaloes, where many take part in the work, the two operations may go on simultaneously, and while one man or boy is churning, others will be milking the buffaloes and carrying the milk into the hut. Usually it seemed that each of the males of the family was taking his part in the proceedings.
FIG. 16.—THE MORNING MILKING AT THE VILLAGE OF MOLKUSH. IN THE BACKGROUND IS A MODERN ‘TU’ MADE OF WOODEN PALINGS.
Whenever I watched the milking operations, I saw one [[54]]man, the head of the family, walking about and superintending the operations, while several other men and youths were milking the buffaloes or churning the milk within the hut. It seemed as if in general each buffalo gave very little milk, and a man soon left one buffalo to go to another, and as the bamboo milking-vessels are small and have soon to be emptied, there was a constant moving about from one buffalo to another and from the milking-place to the hut. A typical milking scene is shown in [Fig. 16]. Each man carries a stick, with which he keeps off troublesome calves who may come to suck while the milking is going on (see [Fig. 17]). If a buffalo and its calf are troublesome, milk is sometimes smeared on the back of the calf, and the buffalo occupies herself with licking the calf, a process which keeps both quiet. At other times, a man may pour milk into his hollowed hand which he gives to one of the buffaloes to drink.
FIG. 17.
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