increase font size
Craig Prichard.
Beyond Massey University’s cheeseboard at Fieldays was the objective of promoting sheep milking.
Associate professor Craig Prichard, a driving force in promoting the new industry, spent all his time at Fieldays handing out samples of an ever-popular smoothie made from sheep milk.
He says Massey is trying to get people used to sheep milk as a food.
“There is an historic gap in New Zealanders’ palette in respect of sheep milk,” Prichard told Rural News. “That’s why we have been doing a smoothie, which is a very popular food.”
And people were able to add their own flavours, which was popular.
Spring Sheep Dairy, which runs a big sheep milking farm in the central North Island, was also on the stand talking to farmers about setting up to milk sheep.
“Sheep dairy is no longer a novelty but we need to build supply now,” Prichard says. “While we have proven markets, NZ still has only 16 significant sheep milk farmers. This this is just a pimple on the side of the dairy industry and we need to ramp that up.”
He says chefs are excited about sheep milk and how it can be used as an ingredient for other dishes, hence the need to think of sheep milk beyond the cheese board.
NZers are good at eating cheese, but getting cheese into foods and developing it as an ingredient is also important, Prichard says.
New research suggests Aotearoa New Zealand farmers are broadly matching phosphorus fertiliser use to the needs of their soils, helping maintain relatively stable nutrient levels across the country’s agricultural land.
William John Poole, a third year Agribusiness student at Massey University, has been awarded the Dr Warren Parker and Pāmu Scholarship.
The head of Massey University's School of Agriculture and the Environment, Professor Paul Kenyon, says the outlook for the primary sector is positive with record numbers of students enrolling for Massey's range of undergraduate courses in the primary sector.
The most successful catchment groups in NZ are those that have 'a source to sea' approach.
Expect greater collaboration between Massey University’s school of Agriculture and Environment and Ireland’s leading agriculture university, the University College of Dublin (UCD), in the future.
Dairy farming in New Zealand offers career progression and this has motivated 2026 Central Plateau Share Farmers of the Year Navdeep Singh and Jobanpreet Kaur.
A partnership between Canterbury milk processor Synlait and the world's largest food producer, Nestlé, has been celebrated with a visit to a North Canterbury farm by a group including senior staff from Synlait, the Ravensdown subsidiary EcoPond, and Nestlé's Switzerland head office.
Canterbury milk processor Synlait is blaming what it calls "a perfect storm" of setbacks for a big loss in its half year result for the six months ended January 31, 2026.
More of the same please, says Federated Farmers dairy chair Karl Dean when asked about who should succeed Miles Hurrell as Fonterra chief executive.
A Waikato farmer who set up a 'tinder' for cows - using artificial intelligence to find the perfect bull for each cow - days the first-year results are better than expected.
Fonterra says it's keeping an eye on the Middle East crisis and its implications for global supply chains.
