Our Story.

Peter and Claire Hansen have blended Peter’s lifelong obsession with registered Jersey show cows into a business model with a difference. Much like the “tiny home” movement, this is a “tiny herd” – a rare phenomenon in New Zealand’s dairy landscape where the average herd size is 440-head.

The beauty of a tiny herd includes a lot of natural advantages for the 16 hand-picked cows, whose milk will fill two 200-litre self-serve milk vending machines every day at the family’s newly minted dairy on-farm at 492 Oxford Rd (just above Fernside school).

The cows are pasture fed, they will only have a short 200m to walk to the dairy each day, and milking takes no more than 20 minutes twice-a-day. Because their milk doesn’t need to be trucked to a milk factory, Fernside Fresh can offer fresher milk than supermarkets could ever achieve.

Jerseys are one of the most efficient dairy breeds on the planet. They produce milk that naturally contains 20% more butterfat – the component which drives flavour. Compared to average milk, a glass of Jersey milk has greater nutritional value – with 15% to 20% more protein, 15% to 18% more calcium, and 10% to 12% more phosphorous. It also includes significantly higher levels of an essential vitamin, B12.

The Jersey breed is also dominant in the production of A2 beta-casein proteins, which has been well documented as helping people with diabetes or lactose intolerance.

And, while Jerseys are the flyweight of the dairy breeds, their power-to-weight ratio is mighty. A Canadian study found that Jerseys are an environmental success story because they eat 20% less feed and drink 30% less water to produce the same kilograms of milk solids as any other breed. “They are pretty big numbers from an environmental viewpoint,” Peter Hansen said.