A Dairy Story

Every day, thousands of dairy calves are separated from their mothers at birth. A Dairy Story follows a husband-and-wife team as they risk everything to prove there's another way.

Over 20 years David and Wilma Finlay transformed their farm in southwest Scotland from conventional to regenerative and, most radically, pioneering commercial scale cow-with-calf dairy farming.

Filmed over two years with unprecedented access, this poignant film captures Wilma and David’s determination to reinvent dairy farming; putting nature and animal welfare first by keeping dairy cows and their calves together. When Wilma receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, their mission to encourage wider adoption of cow-with-calf systems takes on new urgency.

Following calves from birth to weaning, we see the herd's profound capacity for maternal care in the sweeping beauty of the Scottish landscape.

This is a story about the bonds that matter most. It addresses universal themes of connection and mortality, and topics of animal sentience, the environment and system change.

A Dairy Story shows how changing a farming system changes everything; from the lives of the animals to the wellbeing of the farmers, and perhaps even the future of dairy farming itself.