Think Simmentals are just a beef breed? Think again

ASHTON — Robert Oechsli’s alpine cheese is not run-of-the-mill supermarket cheddar. It’s got a bite reminiscent of blue cheese that’s mellowed by a creamy texture and it owes much of that distinct taste to a surprising main ingredient: milk from Oechsli’s pasture-raised Simmental cattle.

The full-time Ashton farmer grew up in Switzerland’s Simme Valley, where the dual-purpose breed originated. While it’s almost exclusively a beef breed in North America, the Canadian Simmental Association roughly estimates that two to five per cent of Simmental producers also milk them. Oechsli has been milking the cattle he imported from Switzerland in the late 1960s for decades.

"I’ve never looked back. Why would I waste half the system?" says Oechsli, who raises a mixed herd of Simmentals, Jerseys, and Ayrshires, south of Ottawa, for organic beef sold at area farmers’ markets. He hand-milks several cows to make cheese, which he ages in the Swiss tradition of air drying in a log cheese house.

Oechsli’s Simmentals are an average of 10-years-old and still calve and produce 25 litres of high butter fat milk daily, he says.

Management is also a breeze. The animals are low maintenance and so are the vet bills, he says. Oechsli believes it’s only a matter of time until farmers see these advantages and he’ll milk his Simmentals until they do.

"It’s a bad habit," he says with a laugh. "I grew up that way and I think it has a future. There is an economy in milking Simmentals."