National press coverage for A Dairy Story

A Dairy Story and the farm at the heart of it have featured in the national press in the opening days of the film’s release.

The Times ran a feature by Aaliyah Ahmed on Saturday 1 August, published in the Alba supplement of the Scottish edition and online across the UK. The piece explores the question at the centre of the film: whether separating calves from their mothers, standard practice across the dairy industry, is a welfare issue. It tells the story of David Finlay’s decision in 2012 to challenge that convention at Rainton Farm, the difficult early years that followed, and the change the farm’s team has felt since, and it notes that when Finlay made the switch a few dozen farms across Europe were experimenting with keeping cows and calves together, where today there are more than 500 across Europe and more than 30 in the UK.

The Herald followed on 2 August with a feature by Vicky Allan, which traces the full arc of the cow-with-calf transition including the visitor questions that first prompted it, the 2012 pilot and its hard lessons, the years of financial strain before the system proved itself, and the farm it has become, where cows and calves graze together. Allan writes that what the Finlays have done “is remarkable and has provided inspiration for others,” counting 21 cow and calf dairies now operating in the UK: “A movement has begun.”