Growing demand for raw milk supply
Supplying raw milk direct to customers has led Central Canterbury dairy farmer Mark Williams to rethink some of his farming practices.
Customer feedback for A2 milk, no palm kernel and no killing of bobby calves is being applied not just to his separate raw milk herd, but to his entire dairy farming operation.
Williams and his wife Kelsey are completing their fifth dairy season following their conversion of a property at Aylesbury, west of Christchurch. In addition to their main herd of 400 cows, since Labour Weekend 2016 they have also run a separate herd of 10 to 20 cows to supply raw milk under the Aylesbury Creamery brand.
Raw milk is straight from the cow, and unlike supermarket milk is not pasteurised, homogenised, or skimmed of cream. As raw milk bypasses the bug-killing heating process of pasturisation, its public sale requires heightened hygiene, auditing and milk testing requirements. It attracts a regular core of buyers who say it is like milk used to be, filling and creamy.
An Aylesbury Creamery customer Ron Smith, of Rolleston, who arrived for a refill says ‘‘it tastes like milk’’. ‘‘It’s like the old days when I was a kid with a glass bottle of milk with the cream on top.’’
Williams says becoming a raw milk supplier came partly out of necessity for diversification of income, during low-payout years. He invested in a large dispensing machine at the farm dairy, selling raw milk and reusable glass bottles. A previous role running a water bottling company, Spring Fresh, at Tai Tapu, means he has previous experience with marketing and auditing. Only 20 operators across New Zealand are registered with MPI to sell raw milk.
‘‘In today’s world consumers care where their products come from and how they are made. We see it as our duty at Aylesbury Creamery to deliver a healthy, safe and nutritious product,’’ he says.
The specially-selected raw milk herd is milked once-a-day in the morning before the main herd to ensure the milking plant is pristine. Extra hygiene steps are required, with staff washing the cows’ teats, udder and legs as well as their own hands and arms. ‘‘The cows’ udders are washed, dried, sprayed with teat spray and dried again. If a cow defecates then we have to start again. We cull for that and three strikes is out. We can’t have a cow that wastes your time.’’
Raw milk cows are selected for good temperament and low somatic cell counts. Ten cows are calved in autumn to maintain milk quality over winter.
As it is critical that the milk is cooled quickly, a secondary cooler is used just for the raw milk to drop it to 7 degrees Celsius. It is then chilled to below 4C in the vending machine.
Williams’ raw milk is tested every 10 days for pathogens including E. coli, listeria, campylobacter and staphylococcus and it is an instant stop if tests come back positive. Customers must sign in when they buy milk so they can be notified if there are any issues. ‘‘Even if results are fine, we use them as an indicator of how well our hygiene is. There’s a lot of extra paperwork and auditing.’’
Williams says the biggest risk with raw milk is once it has left the farm. ‘‘I try to educate people to store milk properly. The biggest risk is people not chilling milk on the way home and not washing bottles properly. Those travelling more than five minutes with raw milk should store it in a chiller bag with ice.’’ Local publicity and a Facebook page have helped to generate sales and in the next week or two he will launch an Aylesbury Creamery website that has been six months in the making.
‘‘Word of mouth is a big thing. We have great local support from the local community with our raw milk and after that we have a great team on the farm of contract milkers Rory Burgess and his partner Jeanette Williamson and second-in-charge Casey Peychers.’’
With the towns of Rolleston, West Melton and Darfield nearby and Christchurch not far away, they have a ready population base to market to with 26,000 people living within a 10 kilometre radius of their farm. ‘‘Some people come religiously. Some people have formed a group, with four families taking turns to come once a month, buying 12 or 16 litres between them each week. The biggest problem is that people are too busy and timepoor to make a special trip.
‘‘Ideally I’d like to be milking 40 raw milk cows, one row of the 40-aside herringbone shed.’’
Before setting up Aylesbury Creamery, Williams sought advice from established raw milk suppliers Village Milk in Takaka.
Feedback from raw milk customers means only A2 cows will be used in future. ‘‘We have been breeding for A2 for the last two years and have just DNA-tested the whole herd. Within the next week or two, once the tests come back, we will only supply A2 milk through the raw milk vending machine. There is quite a demand for it. Some people will only buy A2 milk.
‘‘We’ve changed our farming system in response to customer requests. We don’t do bobby calves any more. Instead of using jersey bulls over our heifers we now use murray greys, so their calves can be sold and finished for dairy-beef. People who buy raw milk don’t want calves being killed, so we are changing to cater for this.
‘‘We are not organic, but try to farm as sustainably as we can. We don’t use acid fertiliser, but reactive phosphate rock instead of superphosphate and in future we won’t spray paddocks out with glyphosate, but just plough them. We want to adopt a simpler system as farms seem to be under more and more pressure from weeds, pests and diseases.
The farm is a predominantly pasture-based system with some supplementary feeding of silage or grain, but no palm kernel. While cows have been wintered on fodder beet and he has a bumper crop this year, he will not grow it again as he believes it is contributing to a rise in empty rates.
The 100 hectare home block is fully irrigated, with an additional 40ha leased across the road. Another 16ha is used to cut and carry silage back to the milking platform. Effluent is applied across the whole farm through the centre pivot.
In a project with Lincoln University, they have trialled the giant multi-purpose sterile grass miscanthus and have several plots along the road boundary and in corners of paddocks for shelter.
Originally from a family beef operation near Fox Glacier, Williams had no dairy farming experience before converting his farm.
‘‘I converted this farm without dairy experience, but drew on the knowledge of experts.’’