The documentary 'A Dairy Story' showcases the emerging practice of cow-and-calf farming at Rainton Farm in Dumfries and Galloway. Owners David and Wilma Finlay allow calves to stay with their mothers for five or six months, instead of the dairy-industry norm of separating them hours after birth. The farm has been fully organic since the 1990s and is thought to be the first European site to attempt cow-and-calf farming at commercial scale.
Challenging Dairy Orthodoxy
This approach breaks dairy-farming orthodoxy, which avoids wasting milk on calves. Neighbouring farmers were sceptical, and even the cows were initially stressed during a 2012 pilot when they were confronted with offspring they expected to disappear. Milk yields dropped but rebounded to a 25% increase in subsequent trials as the mothers settled and extra suckling stimulated production. The film also reveals the damaging routines of old-style methods, including a stressed factory milking schedule with ecological repercussions.
A Film of Change and Sentience
Directed by Ian Findlay, the film uses drone shots of emerald pastures and gambolling calves to make a case for change. Animal sentience considerations that spurred the Finlays to change their ways crystallise further, with each animal's individual personality becoming undeniable. The documentary is staunchly proselytising and slightly repetitive, glossing over details such as farm economics—admitted by David Finlay as a work in progress—and the reality that the milk of human kindness has limits at a beef-producing outlet like Rainton. Nonetheless, it stands as a quiet, steadfast challenge to the industrial-agricultural complex and an uplifting epitaph to Wilma Finlay, who died last year of lung cancer.
'A Dairy Story' screens at Norwich Cinema City on 30 July, then tours.
