Moose house cheese

Cheeses have been made probably as long as mammals have stood still long enough to be milked. In principle, cheese can be made from any type of mammalian milk. It is one the world’s most expensive cheese. It costs about US$455 per pound.

The cheese is sold to upscale hotels and restaurants in Sweden.  Christer and Ulla Johansson started the 59 acre ‘Moose House’ in the late 1990s in Bjursholm, some400 miles north of Stockholm.

Moose house has fourteen moose in the fields, but only three of them – Gullan, Haelga and Juna – can be milked.

The animals were found as abandoned calves in the woods and were taken in by the Johansson family. The domesticated moose stay outdoors all year and weigh about 500 kg each (1,100 lb).

Moose cheese is extremely costly because it is produced in very small quantities only between May and September. It require the most tender of handling during milking since disturbances can cause the animals to get flustered and dry-up. It takes up to two hours to milk moose, which each producing up to a gallon of milk per day. Each year the farm can only offer 300 kg (660 pounds) of cheese.
Moose house cheese