Jersey cows star in Lewis Road single-breed milk
Lewis Road Creamery’s milk range sourced solely from Jersey cows continues to perform for the high-end brand, four years after its launch as the first single-breed standard milk to go on sale in supermarkets nationwide.
“The Lewis Road Jersey range launched as a single-breed milk in 2019 and it’s been part of our fresh milk offering ever since,” says Lynette Maan, Lewis Road Creamery Marketing Director.
“The Jersey milk is popular with our barista and chef customers because of the higher butterfat and lower water content. They love the richness and velvety feel.”
Lewis Road Creamery sources fresh pure Jersey milk from partner Pouarua Farms, jointly owned by Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Paoa, Ngāti Tamaterā, Ngāti Tara Tokanui and Te Patukirikiri. Additional Jersey milk supply comes from Miromiro farm run by parent company Southern Pastures.
“Miromiro is a system 3, wintering 420 Jersey cows and production is 175,000 milk solids per annum, at 420 milk solids per cow. Based on the average milk solids test of 9.9 this would equate to 4,242 litres per cow. The herd is spring calving from 25th July and targets a 280 – 300 day lactation with 50% of cows wintered for 8 weeks. We use lucerne silage, pasture silage and maize silage to feed into gaps.”
Miromiro adheres to a strict and independently audited 10 Star Certified Values which cover grass-fed, free-range, animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and climate change mitigation criteria. The certification is Southern Pastures’ own, which it developed to match its philosophy of farming for future generations through earth-friendly practices. These include increasing carbon concentrations in the soils, reducing GHG, introducing dung beetles and earth worms, and not using PKE as supplementary feed.
“Jerseys are an attractively sustainable option and this is one of the reasons we have retained a full Jersey line, plus the biosecurity positives of breeding our own bulls.”
Miromiro runs a 22% replacement rate and keeps 80 Jersey bulls annually, reared to 2 year olds and have historically used these to mate over crossbred heifers and follow up the cows after AI to reduce biosecurity risk.
“We are however increasing the number of crossbred heifers and cows being mated to Profit Maker® bulls to increase the number of non-replacement dairy animals going to beef. We think the fact that our crossbred Profit Maker® dairy beef animals have some Jersey characteristics is a positive for the eating qualities of the dairy beef. We’re going to try some straight Jersey Profit Maker® beef this year to test our thinking too.”
Prem Maan, Executive Chairman, Southern Pastures and Lewis Road Creamery with the award-winning 10 Star butter that, earlier in the year, won the coveted dairy category at the Specialty Food Show in New York, and the Product of the Year grand prize.
Jersey milk from Miromiro is also incorporated into Lewis Road’s award-winning 10 Star butter sold primarily in the US market. Earlier in the year, this butter won the coveted dairy category at the Specialty Food Show in New York, and also the Product of the Year grand prize.
All Jersey milk sold by the company, including from Pouarua Farms, is PKE and permeate-free. Lynette says the single-breed, natural offering lines up with clear trends among their increasingly sophisticated dairy consumers.
“Our customers want to know about the farms and the animals that produce their milk, they’re interested in the provenance of their food, and they want whole products that haven’t been over-processed. Plus they want to be able to taste a real difference too, which is an easy box to tick with Jersey milk,” she says.
The company segregates its supply of Jersey milk and leaves it as untouched as possible from shed to the shelf. The range is bottled in the brand’s award-winning recyclable rPET bottles made from 100% recycled plastic.
“Apart from all the amazing qualities of Jersey milk, we just really love farming Jersey cows too,” says Lynette. “They’re such gorgeous animals, we call them our covergirls because they’re so beautiful with their caramel colour, big eyes and long lashes.”
The Lewis Road Jersey milk range comes in homogenised blue top, non-homogenised silver top and a light blue top. All versions are sold in 1.5l or 750ml bottles and are available nationwide.