Horse milk cheese is a rare and expensive product due to horse milk’s lower fat and casein content. It takes up to 20 liters of horse milk to produce just one kilogram of cheese.
Given the price of horse milk, this makes the cheese extremely expensive. Moreover, the heat-intensive cheese-making process loses the health benefits commonly attributed to horse milk. Therefore, it’s advised to reserve the limited supply of horse milk for health-oriented uses.
Horse milk is difficult to convert into cheese because it is low-fat. While cow and goat milk have four times more fat, and buffalo and sheep milk have seven times more fat, horse milk falls significantly behind. This leads to a low yield of cheese. It takes an average of 10 liters of cow’s milk or 7 liters of sheep’s milk to make one kilogram of cheese.
Additionally, mare’s milk contains less protein than cow’s, goat’s, and sheep’s milk. It has only 13 grams of casein per liter, a protein crucial for cheese-making, compared to 25 grams in cow’s and goat’s milk, 35 grams in buffalo milk, and 45 grams in sheep’s milk.
Because of these limitations, cheese made from mare’s milk is considered exclusive and luxurious. Despite its scarcity and the complexities involved in its production, some farms specialize in making horse milk cheese.
While horse milk has various health benefits, converting it into cheese is challenging and results in losing these beneficial properties. Coupled with its high cost and the significant amount of milk needed for a small yield, horse milk cheese remains a rarity.
