What is horse milk and where is it produced?
Horse milk is milk from mares. In Central Asia it is mostly used to make kumis, a fermented drink, and a Kazakh study found the milk of Adai mares high in lactose and suited to kumis. We found no official global production figures.
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In this article
What is horse milk?
Horse milk is the milk of lactating mares. A 2019 Nazarbayev University thesis on contemporary Kazakhstan describes kumis as a drink made from fermented mare’s milk and part of Kazakh national cuisine.
Where is horse milk produced?
The thesis says kumis is made mainly in the countryside around big cities by small businesses, and it studied consumers in Astana and Almaty. A paper in the Brazilian Journal of Biology studied Adai Kazakh horses in the Mangystau region of Kazakhstan. We found no FAO or national statistics ranking countries by horse milk output, so we cannot list the biggest producers.
What is in horse milk?
In the Brazilian Journal of Biology study, milk from Adai mares measured by lactation month:
| Month | Fat | Protein | Lactose |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1.28% | 2.32% | 6.19% |
| 3 | 1.37% | 2.28% | 6.24% |
| 4 | 1.43% | 2.24% | 6.39% |
| 5 | 1.66% | 2.22% | 6.11% |
These are results for one breed on one farm, not a standard for all horse milk.
What is horse milk used for?
The authors concluded the milk has high fat and lactose content that suits koumiss (kumis) production. We found no official source on other uses, safety or health benefits, so we make no claims about them. Ask a doctor before using it for any health reason.
Which countries produce horse milk (hors milk)?
We found no official worldwide ranking. The one official figure we opened is from Mongolia: the FAO, citing the Mongolia Bureau of Statistics, lists mare milk at 43.3 thousand tonnes in 2006 (41.5 in 2005), out of 479.4 thousand tonnes of milk of all species. That is about 9% of Mongolia’s total (our calculation).
This updates the earlier line that we found no figures: there are none for the world, but there is this one for Mongolia. It is an old year, and we do not claim it is current.
What is horse milk used for in Mongolia?
The FAO describes airag, a drink fermented from mare’s milk, and says the mares are milked every two hours, night and day, during the short summer. A 2020 study in PubMed Central says horses are among the dairy animals milked in present-day Mongolia and that communal airag drinking continues as a social activity.
Is horse milk produced in Russia?
We found no official source with Russian production figures or a list of Russian regions, so we cannot say how much is produced there.
People also ask
What is horse milk?
Milk from mares. A Kazakhstan thesis describes it as the base for kumis, a fermented drink.
Where is horse milk produced?
Our sources cover Kazakhstan, where kumis is made near big cities and Adai mares were studied. We found no official worldwide ranking.
What is horse milk used for?
In the sources we opened, mainly kumis (koumiss) production.
Which countries produce horse milk?
We found no official world ranking. The FAO page we read gives Mongolia 43.3 thousand tonnes of mare milk in 2006, from the Mongolia Bureau of Statistics.
What does horse milk come from?
It comes from mares, female horses that have foaled. The sources we read describe milking mares for fermented airag or kumis.
Sources
- Nazarbayev University: Narratives of Kumis Consumption and Production in Contemporary Kazakhstan (thesis, 2019), read 5 Nov 2026
- Brazilian Journal of Biology (SciELO): Milk productivity of mares, read 5 Nov 2026
- FAO: Mongolia: Rebuilding the dairy industry, read 5 Nov 2026
- PubMed Central: Dairy pastoralism sustained Eastern Eurasian Steppe populations for 5000 years, read 5 Nov 2026
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