MILK and cream products from Dubbo's The Little Big Dairy Co are in the running for top honours in the NSW division of the Dairy Industry Association of Australia awards.
Last year the single-source, family-run dairy and milk processing company received an armful of gold and silver medals.The Little Big Dairy Co director Emma Elliott is confident of more success in the 2016 competition.
"Judging took place this week but we will have to wait until June for the results to be released," she said.
"We entered our cream and four types of milk - full cream, less cream, no cream and non-homogenised. The entries were flown to Sydney and collected at the airport by my brother Campbell who delivered them to the judging venue."
Emma, a 7th generation dairy farmer, and her husband, Jim, run the processing arm of The Little Big Dairy Co.
Her parents, Steve and Erika Chesworth, and brother, Duncan, and his partner, Danielle, look after the farming side of the business.
"Generations of our family have worked for more than 100 years to sustainably produce the very best milk and cream," Emma said.
"We see the product from start to finish on a family farm at Rawsonville where 900 black and white Holstein cows graze on quality pasture.
"The cows are milked three times a day. The farm produces nine million litres of milk annually. Our factory bottles 16,000 litres each week."
Milk and cream products are distributed to supermarkets, cafes, corner stores, delicatessens, butcher shops and farmers' markets around the western plains and central west regions of NSW.
"We also sell regularly as far away as Canberra and the Blue Mountains," Jim Elliott said.
"Family members do everything from growing the pastures and raising the calves to milking the cows, bottling in the factory, stacking the delivery truck and putting product onto retail shelves.
"When we are working in the factory we look through the windows at cows in the paddocks. Each of the cows is named."
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