We're sorry to say that all milk deliveries have been halted until further notice.

Unfortunately, I got the sad and unexpected news on Wednesday night that our farmer Chris, has sold the farm with settlement on 30 May 2025.

We're very disapointed in the way we have been notified about this, and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience that this might cause you.

This is very "last minute" and not the way farms are usually sold, which I'll explain in a minute.

What this all means is we no longer have a supply of milk and will not be able to process milk until we get another farmer on board.

Shut down explaination

We technically have milk supply up to 01 June 2025, but in reality, we need to have all our equipment off the property before the new dairy season starts and the new owner takes over.

The daily operation of the farm is run by the sharemilker. They own the cows and do all the day-to-day management of the farm and they split the milk income 50:50 with the farm owner.

The sharemilker had recently taken over the milk processing from me in February 2025 while I started setting up Happy Cow Milk in Christchurch.

The have a sharemilking agreement with the farm owner until June 2026.

Based on this 12-month agreement of milk supply until June 2026, both the sharemilker and I invested a lot of work, time and money into Happy Cow Milk Auckland with the view that we would be moving to another farm in June 2026.

The sharemilker have 350 cows that need to find a new home in the next month.

They now have a lot to sort out in a short space of time.

As such, I made the call to stop all production immediately.

Sorry for the disruption.

Before I go further, I want to sincerely apologise to all our wonderful customers for the disruption.

We've been getting so many positive emails recently from customers who love Happy Cow Milk.

We've had so many new customers signing up in the past 2 weeks, and we were just about to announce new collection points in the North Shore.

We were starting to get some real momentum.

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Existing Subscriptions/Order

Existing customers don't need to do anything.

We've paused all orders and subscriptions.

We've deactivated the order section of our website, so if you try to amend your subscription or order, the site won't actually work.

Rest assured, no milk will be ordered and you won't be charged.

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What do I do with my glass bottle?

Please hang onto your glass bottles for now, as we hope that we can be up and running again soon.

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What does this mean for us at Happy Cow Milk?

We view this situation as just another bump in the road for us. This is definitely not the end of Happy Cow Milk Co.

I'm in discussions with a few other farmers in the area. There is a chance we could be selling milk again in a few weeks.

This is probably a good time to reassess how we go forward.

The honest truth is that the model where we partner with an existing dairy farmer is not working.

Simply because existing dairy farmers don't want to farm the "Happy Cow Way".

I don't see this changing anytime soon. We've already been thinking about another model to move forward.

For the past few months, I've been building the business plan to move into other dairy products like butter, cheese, yoghurt, etc. But also whey protein powders and milk powders for the international market.

But, for any of these plans to work, we need to have our farm and milk production done our way and under our control.

So the team and I are making plans to form a syndicate of investors that will enable us to buy a farm and build our business from there.

I'll write about that more at a later date.

Thanks again to all of you for your support and loyalty. We're very sorry for the disruption and inconvenience it may have caused you.

We hope to be back really soon!

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