You can now visit the world's largest camel dairy farm in Dubai

Camelicious started as a modest operation with just 23 camels. It has since grown into the world's largest camel dairy farm, home to more than 7,000 camels today. The transformation happened at a working farm, not a tourist set built to look like one.

Guided tours run daily. Visitors walk the farm, hand-feed the camels and get a look at the milking stations, the production plant and the tasting room. The visit ends with a sampling of fresh and flavoured camel milk and ice cream, made on site from that day's milk.

The care on show goes well beyond a basic feeding schedule. Camels are bathed monthly and given lotion to protect their skin. Each one carries an identification tag tracking its medical and production history. Calves stay with their mothers for the first month, with no milk taken at all during that time. Mothers and calves are reunited after every milking session once that period ends. Feed is carefully balanced — alfalfa, wheat straw, mustard straw and wheat bran, some of the alfalfa imported from as far as Spain and Romania.

One myth gets addressed early on most tours: camels spitting at visitors. Farm staff say it happens, just not nearly as often as reputation suggests, and rarely without a good reason for it.

The farm's output has moved well beyond plain milk. Camelicious now sells camel milk ice cream, ghee and protein bars, and its products sit on shelves in upscale supermarkets, boutique wellness stores and hotel minibars across Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh. What used to be a traditional staple is increasingly marketed as a premium wellness product, sold on the same cultural authenticity that once made it a Bedouin essential.

That shift from traditional staple to premium product is part of what draws visitors to the farm in the first place. For residents used to seeing camels only from a car window on the way out of the city, the tour is a rare chance to get close to an animal that shaped the region long before Dubai had a skyline, and one that is now, quietly, part of its food industry too.