Bovine beauty! Inside Thailand’s pageant for buffaloes

It was five-year-old Tod’s first time competing in a beauty pageant and the bright red interior of his ears turned out and popped against his black fur.

The main stud for his owner, food vendor and farmer Thawatchai Daeng-Ngam, Tod was one of the competitors on Monday at the annual water buffalo racing festival in Chonburi, a city about an hour drive from Bangkok.

Formerly considered humble draft animals, water buffaloes have become prized show animals in Thailand. They are celebrated at the festival, held at the end of the 11th lunar month to celebrate the beginning of the harvest season and put a spotlight on the animals that were once vital to Thai agriculture.

These days, tractors have replaced buffaloes, once prized for their strength and ability to plough fields and transport heavy loads. If the animals are not competing in shows, they are sold for meat.

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Buffaloes were the main attraction at the fair in Chonburi, which kicked off with a parade featuring students performing traditional Thai dance. Some of the buffaloes wore flower crowns as they pulled traditional wooden carriages with wheels two meters (6.5 feet) tall, carrying their owners and women dressed in traditional Thai garb.

The festival also featured a race with buffaloes ridden by jockeys sprinting down a 100-meter (328-foot) track.

Pitun Rassamee came to compete with his three-year-old buffalo with white fur. The albino had already won local competitions, and he hoped Lookaew, meaning marble in Thai, would place in the top five.

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There was good reason to be hopeful. Another albino Thai buffalo was sold in 2024 for 18 million baht ($672,000) after winning multiple pageants.

Thailand’s beloved animal gets a modern role

The shift from farm animals to prized symbols has been a gradual one, accompanying the mechanisation of farming. Thailand’s water buffalo population was in decline for a time.

But the contests have injected new interest in the animals, as well as a new industry enjoying government support. The Thai government designated a Thai Buffalo Conservation Day beginning in 2017 and local governments now provide breeding assistance to farmers.

Thawatchai, the food vendor who owns Tod, said raising the buffalo for competition was only a hobby. He lets it roam freely on his family’s farm and was only at the festival to see how Tod measured up with others.

On bigger farms, the animals are bathed every day and fed a special diet of corn, soybeans, bran and vitamins, explained Kijchai Angkhanawin, who works as a caretaker for prized buffaloes.

He splashed water on the buffaloes he was overseeing at the festival, which stood at least a head taller and were bulkier than many of the other animals. They are judged on horn size, hoof smoothness and overall physique, he said.

In Chonburi, the buffalo-centred events are not new, said Papada Srisophon, an assistant to the chief of a village near a livestock centre where farmers learn techniques to raise the animals.

“Each year it has become bigger and bigger," Papada said, explaining that the contests are an incentive for the farmers to keep raising the animals. “Without this activity, they won’t know what to do with their buffaloes, and they won’t be motivated to keep their buffaloes.”

The bond that caretakers share with their beloved buffalos

At the Chonburi beauty pageant, the owners and caretakers waited with their buffaloes in shaded pens. Fire trucks delivered water for the animals while festival visitors posed for pictures with the biggest animals and families with small children gathered in the stands.

Caretakers then corralled the large animals into a designated pen where judges wearing bolo ties and cowboy hats inspected the contestants.

Many of the owners entering buffaloes in the competition said they grew up with the gentle animals and still valued them, even if they could no longer be of use on the farm.

“Although buffaloes can still work in the field, they cannot compete with machines,” said Thawatchai, whose family still keeps 30 buffaloes, including Tod. “Buffaloes are still important to me. It’s like what they said: ‘People raise buffaloes, and buffaloes raise people.’ It’s like a family member.”