Who produces the milk for Alexandrina Cheese?  
Krystyna and Dan McCaul and family produce all the milk from a single herd of sixty Jersey cows who graze on our dairy farm. The Jersey herd produce 250,000 litres of grass fed milk each year, and we are able to utilise all of the milk harvested on our farm in our cheese room. Interestingly, we don’t source any milk from anywhere else, and this means that we are a true speciality farmhouse manufacturer.   

How many cows are there at Alexandrina Cheese? 

In 2021, we have sixty Jersey cows in the milking herd.  

What kinds of cow’s supply milk for Alexandrina Cheese? 

We keep Jersey cows for their beautiful Jersey milk because it tastes rich, creamy and luxurious. Flavour, protein & butterfat and yield are the main benefits from Jersey milk. We continue to use Jersey milk because of the ability to gain +12%-14% yield, the valuable components of protein and butterfat allow us to obtain 120-140 kg of curd, out of a vat of 1,000L of milk. 

How much milk is produced every year Alexandrina Cheese? 
The Jersey herd produce 250,000 litres of grass fed milk each year. 

What do the Jersey cows eat at Alexandrina Cheese? 

Our Jersey herd receive a fresh patch of pasture after each milking, both in the morning and the evening, this enables them to eat their required 20-22 kg of dry matter each day.  We capture the spring surplus by making hay and silage (fermented hay) extending the availability and nutritional value of the pasture into the summer and throughout the autumn. 

How are the pastures grown at Alexandrina Cheese?  

The management goal of our dairy farm is to allow seasonal variations to dictate our grazing patterns, and to allow our paddocks resting periods without grazing, to ensure regeneration. We graze our cows on a mixture of pasture varieties, and the renovation of pasture is a continual strategy to ensure a balance of subterranean clover and rye grass is achieved, as well as a few other species of grass, including cocksfoot, fescue, Phalaris and kikuyu grasses which help stabilise soils throughout the drier periods of the year. We do not use chemicals, pesticides or herbicides on our grazing lands.  

Who delivers the milk from the dairy to the factory at Alexandrina Cheese?

Dan McCaul and family deliver the milk from the dairy to the factory – which is about 800 metres away. We use a tractor and a tanker to move the milk. This is monitored by our Dairy Safe Certification Program (HACCP).

At Alexandrina Cheese is all the milk made into cheese?

No, approximately eighty percent of the milk is made into cheese, and the other twenty percent is made into milk, cream, crème fraiche, ricotta and yoghurt.  

What volume of cheese and luxury dairy products are produced at Alexandrina Cheese?

Approximately 30-40 tonne of cheese is manufactured each year, and approximately 25,000-50,000 litres is made into milk, cream, crème fraiche, ricotta and yoghurt each year.

Are there any by-products when manufacturing Alexandrina Cheese? What do you do with these by-products?  

Whey is our only by products of the cheesemaking process, and roughly half of this whey is made into ricotta, the other half is filtered into an EPA approved three-tiered pond system, which operated under a process of natural anaerobic decomposition.