What is a microdairy?

There is no hard and fast rule to how big a microdairy can be, but normally a microdairy is a smaller start up dairy rather than a well-established commercial dairy unit.

In our case we started out with a single cow, Freya, in November 2016, and have rapidly expanded to the dizzying height of 60 cows. Not all of the girls are in milk - some are "dry" (i.e. having a holiday between calvings) - we also don't milk everyone every day - it all depends on how much the calves are taking. We don't like to put pressure on the girls to keep providing us with huge volumes of milk - their main task is to rear their calves - any milk we can share is a bonus.

There are many benefits to being a microdairy, not least that we are not tied into a bulk milk contract with one of the big dairy processors and as such we don't have to sell our beautiful milk at a knock down price to the lowest bidder. From our point of view this is brilliant because we get to set our own standards of animal welfare, cleanliness and quality. It also means that we are able to sell our milk direct and get to meet our customers (who then become friends!) on a first hand basis.