Not Your Typical Pet

No matter how busy he is, Jeff Mease will always make time for one thing -- Shadow, his 9-week-old orphaned Asian water buffalo.

Mease has 26 other Asian water buffalo. All of them shunned Shadow when she was born, so now she spends most of her time with humans and the farm dog Louie.

"She doesn't even know she's a buffalo I think, by now," says Mease.

These animals are not the humpbacked, Great Plains, American bison. Asian water buffalo pretty much look like cows with a striking set of horns. These horns can either coil like Rollie Fingers' moustache or jut out like scythe blades.

Shadow's horns, at this point, are just nubbins.

Gentleman Farmer

You can guess by the name that these Asian water buffalo are not native to Indiana. So, why did it seem like a good idea to bring these animals to Midwestern America? First, you have to understand what motivates Jeff Mease -- food and community.

He's a very successful restaurateur. He owns Pizza X, a local pizza delivery chain; Lennie's restaurant; and the Bloomington Brewing Company.

For fun, he runs a farm. "Some people golf, some people love movies. I like to get out here and feel nature and grow stuff and give it away," he says.

He grows hops for the brewery. His eighty tomato plants produce all the tomatoes for Lennie's. (Shadow enjoys snacking on tomatoes, too.)

The Problem With Cheese

He also had a vision to make his own cheese; this one specific kind of cheese -- buffalo mozzarella. He first experienced it in Italy, where they milk the water buffalo, make the mozzarella and sell it at the market all on the same day.

"The mouth-feel and the flavor of it is just exquisite. You would sit down and eat a baseball-sized chunk of this cheese and want more," he says. "After it's been refrigerated, then it's considered to have a much lower value and they use it on pizza."

That was Jeff's grand plan -- buy nine water buffalo with the intention of milking them for cheese.

But then the problems started stacking up.

As the herd grew in size, simply raising the animals took a lot of time. He realized his 70-acre plot of land was too small for the number of animals he would need. Not to mention constructing a creamery. That would have been quite an undertaking.

So now what? He still wanted to produce something -- but instead of cheese, what if the buffalo were the product?

"I realize I can't do it all myself, and so I'm working on finding interested people," he says.

He wants to transform his farm into a breeding operation so he can get water buffalo out into this part of the world. He envisions southern Indiana as a national hub for Asian water buffalo.

"If I've got to give them buffalo, that's what I'll do," he says. "It's free to a good home."

Two of his bulls are headed for a farm in Vermont. Any takers locally? Not yet.

A Girl Named Shadow

Mease says everyone who meets Shadow falls in love with her a little bit. Right now, she's adorably clumsy at just under 200 pounds. She'll grow to eight-times that size when all is said and done.

He makes it abundantly clear that Shadow is his favorite, because she's like family.

"I think once you give them a name, yeah. She is like family.