This is a dairy farm with a difference where the cows are seen as more than milk-producing machines.
We passed all your happy, happy cows on the way down. Yes, very happy and spoilt by their bellies.
How many do you have in total?
We have 45 now including babies, moms, dry cows and every single one is named with a ‘T’
except for our twins they are named with ‘Ms’ because they were different.
What is her name? This is Tansy. She's one of our original girls.
We originally got four cows when my brother came out of hospital, and she was one of our original girls.
We've only got two left I'm afraid, but she's one of our very precious children
who wears a Christmas hat on Christmas day and loves the family.
It’s interesting because we’ve just seen the milking process and we go to a supermarket
and just take the milk off the shelf and think it is all fine. But the way you are doing it....
We are doing it very differently, very ethically. I don’t like major dairy farms where the cows are kept in a pen.
The babies are taken away at a day old, they can’t move, they’re just in one little block,
ours are with their moms until a month old and then they get taken away at night,
and then at three months old they get taken away fully, but we find they are much happier, healthier.
They pretty much own the farm, the babies, they do whatever they want whenever they want.
It is very important to us that the babies and the moms are all happy. We don’t push our cows.
They're never stressed. And then the quality of the milk that you are actually getting?
We are getting a much higher milk solid to the amount of milk we’re getting, it’s very creamy.
You'll see when we go through. In the morning you’ve got about that much cream on your one litre milk. Oh Tansy!
Well, this is my welcome to farm life! Yes, you’ve been initiated now.
Am I welcome by the cows now? Yes, she loves you very much.
Kerry this is our dairy. Come in. Here’s some of the milk. Oh wow! Is that the cream on the top?
All cream on the top and it will even separate more by tomorrow.
I don't think I've ever seen milk like that for the last 50 years. It's it's very rare to find.
But as you can see Florrie is just filling a couple of bottles for which a customer will come later.
She's coming to collect for her family. So this really does show your quality of your milk it's just fantastic.
Our quality of milk is very high because our cows aren't pushed. We're low input low output.
We understand that we're never going to get 25 liters out of a cow which some dairies do but we're fine with that
because the quality is so much better. The milk solids in our milk is so much higher than normal milk.
So we're very happy and our girls are very happy, very much madams; if they don't want to be milked
they don't get milked. If it's windy they don't want to walk they won't walk.
Are you finding that......I mean each one of these cows has its own character.
Every single cow is different. All of them, I know them very well now. I’ve worked with them for half a year
and as soon as they walk out of the paddock I can tell if they’re sick, I can tell if something's wrong.
I can tell usually two days before if they're going to calve because they just change, and I can see that change straightaway
which is very important to my mum and I to make sure that we know each cow and we are happy with each cow.
I think it’s important for everybody to actually start understanding that the milk we are getting is
just a product but there is an animal behind it, there’s a character behind that.
Definitely. To treat them humanely you’re just going to get better products at the end of the day.
Yes, I agree and my mum often says people just see the cow standing in the paddock chewing the cud.
And it's just a cow to them but to us it's our pet. Everyone has a name, everyone is special to me.
If one is sick. I feel sick. I'm so worried about them I wake up every hour to check them,
and we make sure that everyone is cared for in their own specific way.
I also think that your customers are probably really happy because they are drinking the milk. I’m one of them now!
I’m going to buy some of this milk. I’m quite sure that their health is probably better through this quality.
Yes, if you've heard of a book called 'The Devil and Milk'. It’s about A1 and A2 protein and lactose intolerant
people who can't drink A1 protein but they can drink A2, and because we aren’t pushing our cows,
we're not feeding silage. All our milk is A2 and we have 3 customers who come and buy milk and their
lactose intolerant children can drink our milk without a problem. Our customer base is growing exponentially,
which is a little bit scary for me, and we are getting bigger and bigger by the day so it’s very exciting.
....and is your vision, if you do grow will you grow your farm the same way with the same principles that you’ve implemented now?
Yes, we are very strict on our principles. We are using select semen so we don’t have bull calves
because we don’t believe in the culling of bull calves. The few that we do have are from when we started
are what my mom calls paddock friends and they just live here and eat grass,
and when we are bigger the most we want to milk is 100 cows. So we will still have the same principles.
We'll still be small. We will expand our cheeses but still what our cows can produce not pushing them,
If drop during winter.....they drop. We'll just have less product. I'd love to taste some of this milk! Of course!
Here you go we've got some warm, fresh milk from the cows this morning. Excellent!
There we go creamy and delicious. Enjoy. It’s quite sweet when it’s warm.
It tastes delicious, it really tastes delicious. I mean.....there’s no smell or anything.
You kind of think it’s going to smell like a cow but it doesn’t.......just like normal milk.
No it's delicious. I think you could drink a lot of this.
It's my nephew's favorite thing. I think he probably drinks about a liter a day when he visits us.
It goes down so nicely. Now if one of the cows is ill because this is not pasteurised does that get past down as well?
No, we’re very careful about our cows, we have teat wash, teat guard – everything. The only thing they can
get is mastitis, it’s just a little bug that gets in but we have a mastitis checking cup and if there's the slightest
chance that they have mastitis we don’t use that milk it gets thrown away, and then SCC counts,
TB, contagious abortion they check for once a year. They’re clean, they’re happy, they’re healthy we make sure of it.
Well it tastes awesome, and you've also got some yogurt. Yes. I've got some yogurt straining there.
We strain our yogurt the traditional way through muslin cloth. So it’s heated in a big cheese vat, cooled down,
wrapped in blankets overnight, all nice and warm so the cultures work and then it’s strained
through muslin cloth traditional – old fashioned going back in time.
So this is really taking us back but really bringing the nutrition back into our food.
Yes, there’s no bad stuff in there, it’s just the live cultures, so it’s a really good probiotic. It's healthy,
it's full fat, good for you. Delicious...... I could live on yogurt.
Well done for what you are doing. Thank you. It's wonderful to see a young person going back and doing
such traditional, nutritious food productions. Thank you so much. It’s really awesome.
Hi Helen. So you’re one of the regular customers here at Abbey’s Farm?
Yes, I come once a week to get my milk.
And what benefit has it had for.......have you seen a benefit in drinking this milk?
Yes, I have, especially with my daughters, the one especially she was intolerant, very intolerant.
She used to get terrible sinus and she even got bronchial pneumonia and when I put her onto this milk
she can drink as much of it as she wants, she’s completely fine with it just because it’s in its natural state.
Yes and it’s so wonderful to hear that because most people say if there’s a problem with the
children’s allergies – cut out dairy and here you are having dairy.
Exactly. Well the doctors told us that my daughter was dairy intolerant and she
wouldn’t every be able to have dairy and I didn’t want to accept that so......
That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. Enjoy.