Buffalo Reserve in Balatonmagyaródi
MúzeumCafé 8.
The indigenous buffalo is one of Hungary’s ecological treasures. It is easier to collect Herend porcelain, as a glass cabinet can store a collection, while buffalos require at least a few hectares of land and lots of fodder. Buffalos are favoured for their milk or meat, and these stubborn and extremely strong creatures are also useful farm animals. Hungary’s buffalo reserve is both a demonstrative lesson of biology and a professional workshop for correct animal husbandry. Róbert Gál, a deputy director of the Balaton Uplands National Park and president of the National Association of Hungarian Buffalo Breeders says: “Buffalos came to Hungary from Asia, though we don’t exactly know how, but there are references to them first being raised in the Carpathian Basin by the Avars.” Today wild water buffalos (Bubalus bubalis arnee) live only in the marshlands of eastern India. They must have been domesticated in China five or six thousand years ago, after which they appeared in India and Mesopotamia. They spread from these countries to southeast Asia, Africa and Europe. Buffalos were an endangered species in Hungary when the reserve was set up. They are no longer in danger of extinction yet Róbert Gál and his colleagues still have a lot to do. Stock preservation and maintenance began in the early 1990s when the National Park purchased the local state farm with its 16 buffalos. At that time their number in Hungary hardly reached one hundred. Their genome is pure, of several hundred years and Hungarian. The latter is important because buffalos also live in Transylvania and they are raised on large farms in Bulgaria and Italy – think of mozzarella made of buffalo milk!