Fermanagh, being one of Ireland's coldest and wettest counties, is not the most obvious base for a new ice-cream brand. But Gareth Grey and his brother-in-law Steve Giles believe their new Tickety-moo brand has a secret ingredient.

The Grey family farm, near Irvinestown, has a herd of nearly 160 Jersey cows, imported from Denmark six years ago. The Jersey cows produce a much higher fat, protein and calcium content in their milk than other breeds, which makes for a much creamier tasting ice-cream.

"If you look into the freezer departments at supermarkets, there's any number of cheap ice-creams. If you pick them up, some don't feel much heavier than the tub they're in because there's so much air in them.

"There's pulp and bulking powder and they're tasteless and nutritionless. So, we thought we'd make an ice-cream with real milk and real cream," says Grey.

Grey and Giles are aiming the brand at the luxury end of the market, competing with the likes of Ben & Jerry's or Häagen-Dazs. But Grey is confident that, in the taste stakes, they will win out. "We're the only luxury brand we know of that is made using milk from Jersey cows. Our nearest competitor is a company in Glasgow that uses milk from a herd that's 75 per cent Jersey."

With a Hollywood, Co Down-based design company, the pair have come up with distinctive vivid-green packaging which, as Grey is keen to point out, will certainly stand out in the freezer.

"We wanted a cool, clean image - something that would take us across Europe if we had to. We didn't want it to have a traditional farmhouse image, but we did want to relate it back to the farm. So, on the address, we call the farm Moo HQ," Grey explains.

The text on the packaging should also appeal to the affluent foodie market. "Chilled cows produce the sweetest milk," it reads.

The Jersey cows really were the inspiration for the product. In 1999, facing falling prices for standard milk, Grey's brother Marcus, against the advice of several agricultural experts, sold the farm's Friesian herd and imported the Jerseys from Denmark.

Dairies pay according to the protein content of the milk, and Jerseys have much higher protein content.

At the time both Grey and Giles were working in London, Grey in the IT industry and Giles as an aeronautical engineer. Both quit their jobs and moved home to set up in the ice-cream business.

"We thought about how we could process this very high quality milk. We thought about cheese and yoghurt, and then we hit on ice-cream and thought that would be the most fun," explains Grey.

Grey arrived home in the summer of 2004 and set about converting an old barn into a future ice-cream factory. Both he and Giles also began to learn about the ice-cream business.

They visited factories and exhibitions, learnt about the machines and eventually got to a point where they were able to make their own product by March 2005.

"We knew at this stage it was pretty good. We'd experimented. We knew the Jersey cow milk would give it a different taste."

They held an open day on Easter Saturday last year, inviting local people and holidaymakers at the nearby caravan parks. About 1,000 people showed up on the farm, far more than anticipated. The product sold through a shop on the farm last summer.

"You can see the calves in the field and, if you're there at the right time, you can see the cows being milked. The caravaners love that," says Grey.

The pair had a harder time convincing hoteliers in the area to pay extra for a locally made ice-cream. "I was approaching hotels and restaurants at that stage but they thought we were too expensive. But once we got to prove ourselves and word went around, they were coming back to us and asking us for it," he says.

Next spring the two will begin the arduous process of expanding beyond the Fermanagh area. They have benefited from a high-profile appearance on the cookery show Ready Steady Cook, while Grey scooped the Shell Livewire Entrepreneur of the Year award for Northern Ireland. But he is also aware that the hard work may only have begun.

"Someone said to me at the start: 'don't underestimate the cost of distribution'. I've always remembered that. It's enormous, the cost of people to drive your trucks, fuel, tax and the time it takes. If you add those together, it's a lot," he says.

Despite this, he aims by the end of next summer to have a solid stream of outlets for Tickety-moo North and South.

Grey plans to recruit the outlets himself and is keen to concentrate on high-end cafes and delis. The company will provide a specially branded freezer for outlets which Grey says will cost £200 (€293) a pop. "It's going to be worth it because we can justify a high price," he says.

After that, he is bullish as to where the company can go eventually. "There's no lid, effectively. Maybe it's 10, 15 or 20 years away, but why couldn't we be sold all over the world? Of course, there's a lot of work to do before that," he adds.