The roughly 1300 litres of raw milk produced weekly by Buttercup Dairies sells for $2.50 a litre, equivalent to a return of around $30kg/ms, compared to Fonterra’s commercial milk solids return of about $9/kg. They also supply two-litre stainless steel containers for $20 each. Buttercup Dairies’ clients can ll their own containers from the dispenser, but most take advantage of the one-litre glass bottles with a screw-lid that Grays sell for $4 each. The DF Italia dispenser was bought through raw milk consultant Richard Houston’s Takaka-based agency. From the small roadside shed the raw milk passes into an Italian-made dispenser from which clients upload quantities ranging from a single litre to 30l. The farm has two milking sheds, a modern 44-a-side herringbone in which the commercial herd is milked, and a restored 12-a-side HB shed for the raw milk cows. In doing so, Tom Gray beat the Livestock Improvement Company’s (LIC) introduction of crossbreed genetics by 30 years, and the family always has bred its own replacements, with the herd sitting in the top 10% of New Zealand herds for genetic merit. It was this that led to Neil’s father Tom Gray 50 years ago taking the then-unusual step of establishing a Jersey-Friesian crossbred herd of medium-weight cows to minimise the winter problems. The farm has been in the Gray family for over a century, sometimes struggling to keep the pasture cover on the pugging winter soils of the Hauraki Plains. Buttercup Dairies draws its client base not just from nearby towns, of which the biggest is Thames, but throughout the Coromandel and Waikato, with some clients from Auckland visiting the farm on the way to holiday homes on the peninsula. As such it has more than justi ed the investment needed to break into the increasingly popular raw milk market. The Grays’ 175ha farm at Turua on the Hauraki Plains gets most of its income from its 520 crossbred cows, but the raw milk sales from 20 other cows delivers about three times the returns per litre they get from Fonterra.

His novel charts the success of Andrew Ewing, who started out life as a penniless child in Stranraer but went on to establish one of the most successful poultry businesses of his time, including the 86-acre Buttercup Farm.Ī generous and religious man, Mr Ewing refused to charge for any eggs laid at his farm on a Sunday, donating more than 100,000 to hospitals every week, and eventually died without any money, having given most of it away.īuttercup Farm Park, Drumbrae, Edinburgh.38 | nzdairy DAIRY PEOPLE » Buttercup Dairies Milk bottles all the rage at Buttercup Hugh de Lacy The old glass milk bottle that used to feature in home deliveries has come back to life as the container of choice for many of the clients of Glenda and Neil Gray’s Buttercup Dairies raw milk business. Local author Bill Scott, who wrote 'The Buttercup – The Remarkable Story of Andrew Ewing and the Buttercup Company', also joined the celebrations. The second phase will begin in autumn, and will involve the planting of trees and preparation of wildflower meadows. The initial phase, now finished, has seen the implementation of a new park landscape, play area and toddler zone with lawn, picnic tables and seating. The £235,000 project, designed by City of Edinburgh Council, was supported with funding from Edinburgh and Lothians Greenspace Trust (ELGT) and Waste Recycling Environmental Limited (WREN) and will be completed in two phases. The new Buttercup Farm Park was opened last week by Mr Ewing’s relatives, including great nieces and nephews and children of former poultry farm workers, some of whom had lived on the farm. At its peak, the Buttercup Dairy had over 250 shops in Scotland and the north of England.

The first new park to be built in Edinburgh for fifteen years has opened - on the site of the old Buttercup Farm, owned by Andrew Ewing, founder of the famous Buttercup Dairy Company.

Buttercup dairy