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Increasing scale is an ongoing process in Dutch dairy farming. Average farm size in the Netherlands is about 70 cows. True benefits of scale however occur at sizes above 500 cows. A sudden growth to larger scale will bring the benefits of scale within reach in a couple of years. In the Cowmunity project, three farmers developed five new concepts for a 1000 cow farm somewhere in the Netherlands. These new concepts were developed along two axes: grazing versus zero-grazing and technology versus labour. The Animal Sciences Group was asked to perform an assessment study on these concepts. Objective of this study was to evaluate the concept, list the possible bottlenecks and suggest solutions. This paper describes the differences between the concepts and the critical success factors focussing on economic results and environmental impact.