Words: Pattie Pegler Photography: Supplied

Sitting at his laptop in t-shirt, jeans and jandals at Christchurch’s BizDojo workspace, Glen Herud looks focused. He’s on his third coffee of the day and was at the gym at 7am.

So far so urban entrepreneur. But appearances can be deceptive - Glen isn’t pitching lifestyle apps but rather a kinder, greener way to do dairy. The son of a Southland dairy farmer, he grew up around cows and milked his first one when he was 10, he says. He went on to get a diploma in agriculture from Lincoln and in 2014 Glen started Happy Cow Milk in North Canterbury with a mobile milking machine he had developed himself. He wanted to try and do dairy differently – he wanted to keep calves with their mothers for longer, provide the milk in reusable glass bottles and be able to do this on a small scale. Last time I interviewed him for a magazine we did the interview in a
paddock in North Canterbury as he dealt with his cows.

But there were endless obstacles and Happy Cow Milk was forced into liquidation in early 2018 – which was well documented in the media. Assets were seized, Glen lost control of the bank accounts and there are still approximately $100,000 of unpaid debts left in his wake – he will pay these back, he says. The failure also came at a cost to his personal life – savings were dwindled to nothing and
his marriage of 20 years broke up. For many that might have been the point at which they changed track. There can be a thin line between determination and misguided self-belief. It’s a thought that has occurred to Glen.

“We’ve all got that friend who wants to be an actor or a singer or something like that and they try and try…but only a very few make it. How do I know I am that guy who will make it?” he says.
The answer, of course, is that he doesn’t know but Glen is a self-confessed ‘relentless optimist’ and, overwhelmed by support from customers and other contacts, he decided to give his idea another go. He has spent the last year and a half analysing what went wrong and coming up with a better, more scalable plan. Then in December last year he raised $400,000 in a single day crowdfunding for his
Happy Cow 2.0 venture. Confirmation, if he needed it, that there’s a very keen public appetite for this kind of project.

The new system is like a sort of ‘milk factory in a box’. It will allow farmers to pasteurise their own milk in standalone tanks that are also used to transport the milk to the retailer. So the farmer will milk the cows, the milk will go into the tanks, the tank will pasteurise the milk and then be delivered to the retailer. People will then fill their bottles and pay at the tank. The proceeds will be split between the farmer, the retailers and Happy Cow 2.0 – with the lion’s share going to the farmer.

And all this will be possible without prices being unreasonably high, Glen estimates they will be able to charge $2.50 a litre and still make a fair return.

The next few months will see the prototype of this system built. It will then be inspected by the Ministry of Primary Industries for approval. If all goes well then the first trial will be run with an enthusiastic farmer in the Auckland area.

It’s a big idea and whilst it’s garnered him plenty of media coverage and support from consumers, it’s drawn a more sceptical approach from some of those in the established dairy model. Along with some quite negative feedback online.
Glen is happy to debate the merits or otherwise of his idea and doesn’t take the criticism personally, “I think a lot of them probably think, “who is this guy with no cows telling us what to do?” “They think I’m criticising them, but I’m not, I am just challenging the way dairy is done - a lot of people in Canterbury think I am an idiot,” he says candidly.

But setbacks and failure are an integral part of the back story to many very successful people. Perseverance and being able to handle failure can make all the difference. And Glen isn’t giving up. He’s full of conviction when he talks about his plans and he’s convinced he can make dairy better for farmers, cows and the environment.

“That’s what drives me,” says Glen, “it’s not that hard to make dairy really good and nobody is really
doing it.”

Greener Pastures