11. Steve McQueen & The Happy Cows

This post is an update of what is happening currently on the farm before my long weekend off, during which I am heading to Queenstown. It mainly contains pictures of cows. It also contains one small swear word near the end, which was only used because I didn't know what other word to use. In fact I am not even sure it is a swear word.

As of now, at the end of August, 420 cows/heifers have now calved. The milking herd is getting relatively large, especially by UK standards. Although the farm across the road milks 1300 cows at its peak!

The milking herd on its way to be milked

Now that the weather has improved after the torrential downpours of earlier on in the month everything is going a bit easier. Having said that there are always problems that are inevitable when working with livestock, mainly a few sick cows who won't stand up ('downers' for those of you who are un-dairy-educated).

A positive note herd health wise is the fact that our presence of uterine infection, a common ailment when calving outdoors, is low at just 8%. According to the vets who tested all the cows who had calved two weeks ago or more, our herd has the lowest rate of the area, the next best being at 15%.

The calving cows are much happier when calving on dry land, as opposed to the sodden paddocks that would very quickly turn to mud (See post 8. 'Mud-calving'). 

There have been very few problems and the good conditions make bringing the calves in a lot easier.

The repercussions of the lack of clean grass are still and will be felt for a few months. There was a brief spike in the incidence of mastitis (infection of the udder) but that was quickly quashed. Our routine of stripping the herd out twice a week is important in picking up any cases very quickly. For those of you not familiar with milking practices, this is milking each cow by hand (briefly) and checking the milk for any worrying signs, small lumps or a change in colour, before they are milked as normal. 

The major result of the wet weather is that we moved the cows much more often than usual to keep them on clean ground. This played havoc with the grazing schedule and means we are currently way ahead of the plan. To try and slow down the grazing rate, we are feeding out a fair bit of silage (fermented grass) to keep the diet high in energy and also to keep their stomachs full.

Because of the poor weather the grass stopped growing (although it is shooting up now) and the paddocks have a bit less than the predicted schedule allowed for. The supplementary silage also covers for this. 

During the trying times of early August, we noticed that the cows lost a fair bit of condition, they were using up a fair amount of their own body fat after calving. This is natural and perfectly normal, but to prevent too muck of a loss, the barley and molasses that are fed at milking was upped to 2kg/day and ~0.5 kg/day respectively. This gives them a good energy boost and they are looking well because of it. In the trough in the milking shed where this breakfast/ afternoon tea is fed, the resulting mix looks and smells exactly like flapjack  mix. If you threw in a few raisins and baked it, I am sure it would be delicious. 

As well as visually noticing the cows looking a bit skinny, the milk fat measurement had shot up. The protein level had dropped slightly. When such a gap appears between the two important components of milk, it is also a good sign that body fat is being used up as some of it is secreted into the milk.

I would say that now, the majority of the stock is looking well, and we can look forward to spring with plenty of grass growth as the last 100 or so cows calve.

You may be wandering about the title of this post. It is because of the new (actually very old) mode of transport I have been using.

I think the resemblance is uncanny.

The two-wheeler's lack of power is amusing. My occasional lack of balance is not. It is however, pretty good fun, and still very much a novelty. From the kick-start to the leaning into the corners, I feel as if I am fleeing the Nazis whenever I ride across the paddocks. 

That is all for today, I will leave you as I rev my way back home for a snickers sandwich (peanut butter and nutella) and a very hot shower that will hopefully melt some of the cow shit off me.

Feel free to comment and ask me any questions about the farm or dairying in general, and keep reading the blog.

10. Dun-a-deen & The Otago Peninsula

Try as I may, whenever I see the word Dunedin (the second largest city in the South Island), I pronounce it 'Dun-a-deen' in my head. I have no idea why, but it makes me sound like an idiot if I say it out loud. Anyway this post is about my mini city break to Dunedin during my latest couple of days off from work.

Before I get to that I will just introduce you all to some of the latest additions to the farm:

As you can see they are just delightful!

But then again so were these lamb burgers I made the other day. I am looking forward to sampling some of the home-reared lamb. The bottle pictured below is my NZ beer of choice, Speight's, which is brewed in Dunedin.

Anyway, back to my trip south down the coast to the capital of Otago. I drove the 70 odd mile distance without stopping, making mental notes of everything I passed that I wanted to see on the return journey. I forgot about most of them and U-turns became a major feature of the drive home. 

I got into Dunedin after some long slow hills, upon which the Nissan performed admirably, making good use of the helpful passing lanes. Once into the city I got immediately lost. I don't enjoy city driving when I am in the UK in a city which I am familiar with, never mind in a strange a city, with many tiny road signs. At least they do drive on the left in NZ. 

The large amount of traffic lights gave me good opportunity to find where I was on a map, but not enough time to find out where I was meant to be going. After getting thoroughly exasperated with the countless missed turnings and wrong lane choices, I eventually found a hostel in which I could stay the night. 

I payed just $25 for a bed, in a 'dorm room' which was shared with one other bloke, whom the landlady assured me was very nice. I wasn't so sure at first, I though I had been lodged with a weirdo, look how much honey he had under his bed:

He turned out to be OK, he was from Malaysia and was visiting his girlfriend who was at Otago University, before flying off to complete his law degree at a British Uni. I asked him where, and by amazing coincidence he was off to Aberystwyth University where I learned a lot, mostly the capability of my liver but also a small amount about agriculture. Pretty amazing considering I chose the hostel and was assigned the room at random. I am unsure how to spell his name, but it sounded like 'as if''. As if, that was his name. 

Having landed and parked the car, I wandered around the city centre and the famous Octagon (the central plaza). It is a city built on industry, founded by Scots. Much of that heritage is apparent when looked at, right up to the statue of Robert Burns in the Octagon. I generally try and stay away from the 'touristy' places so I didn't really go to any of the major attractions of the city. Although I did wander around enough shops to last a few months at least.

 Eventually I was drawn to the warmth of a pub. My pub of choice was 'The Robbie Burns', and it was there I stayed for a few hours and sampled a responsible amount of the local brew (Speight's of course). Much banter and enjoyable pub conversation ensued and I feel that Anglo-Kiwi relations are improved after my time there. One of the locals is an ex-pat from London who could well be solely responsible for the British warm beer stereotype. I was ashamed and embarrassed to find out that he had his beer microwaved, "Fifteen seconds will do just fine thank you." Before I left the 'Burns' I was made an honourary local, for which I am enormously proud. 

The one picture of the city I took during my cold walk home was of the moon shining brightly above the town hall. I don't remember taking it to be perfectly honest. 

I should add that in no way do I condone excessive consumption of alcohol, even in the interests of international diplomacy. 

I awoke bright and early to a beautiful morning with not a cloud in the sky. My plan for the day was to explore the Otago Peninsular which juts out from Dunedin into the ocean forming Otago Harbour as well as some awesome landscape. 

I drove out of the city across either a bridge or a causeway, I was paying too much attention to the road signs to notice. The road I drove along wound its way along the waters edge, and looking back produced a great panorama of the city.

The winter sun was shining very brightly in my eyes, glaring off the water, and the proximity of the road to the sea was at times slightly worrying. It was sunglasses, visor and 'raised hand trying to block out the sun' driving conditions.

I thought I should visit New Zealand's only castle, so I did just that. Larnach Castle is not much of a castle by European standards, but it does have battlements and a very nice garden.

In the garden I found an example of an actual Silver Fern, which is actually green, but is silver when adorning the jersey of an All Black. 

One thing has to be said about Larnach Castle, the views from the tower were incredible.

The first photograph is looking out across the water separating the peninsular and the mainland. The second image is the view looking out towards the far end of the the peninsular. The pointy hill is called Harbour Cone. 

After visiting the castle, I drove down towards Sandfly Bay at took a few snaps of the beach and some woolly locals. Having just looked at a map, this is the furthest south I have ever been which I suppose is quite something.

I took the back way from here toward the end of the peninsular along roads that I am pretty sure were under water a few days ago. Some still were. There were some great scenes of the inlets and some of the waterfowl that inhabit the area. 

Eventually I got to the end of the Otago Peninsular, where there was the Royal Albatross Centre (closed) and a quite frankly disappointing cafe from where they run wildlife tours. As regular readers will know, I prefer to take myself on my own wildlife tours. 

There was this view though, I thought it could almost be a sunny day on the Welsh Coast, if such days existed!

I also thought I should take a portrait of the car that was going so well, in front of a strange but interesting rock-tree combo.

The Avenir continued to perform well, especially going up the steepest street in the world, which can be found, eventually, in the suburbs of Dunedin. I tried to take a video of me driving up Baldwin Street in mostly 3rd gear, but the camera fell of the passenger seat headrest. The hill inclines at at 19°, for every horizontal 2.86m traveled, the road rises by a metre.

Back on the open road, driving North up the coast, I stopped off at a place called Shag Point to have a look at some of the wildlife that occasionally swims, flies or waddles onto the rocks there. 

After a bit of searching and climbing around on rocks in inappropriate footwear, I found a seal enjoying a late afternoon siesta. I managed to get really quite close to him as he dozed on the sun-soaked rocks. 

I thought this was a great photo opportunity and tried to get a photo of us both together, I didn't quite put my arm round his shoulder but I was right next to him.

It turns out I was too close, he woke up and saw me and got very angry.
What I would like to say is that I didn't run away. But I did.

I also stopped off at the Moeraki Boulders which are famous for being very round. They were as spherical as I expected but there were rather less than I thought there might be. Worth a stop though.

Right that is all for now. In hindsight I probably should have split this post into two separate ones. It has taken me about three days to write.

Thanks for reading, and share this blog among your friends.

9. Miscellaneous Snippets

Although the title of today's blog post sounds like a Dickens character, it is in fact an excuse for not doing, seeing or photographing anything important enough to warrant its own post. So it is more of a roundup of recent news.

The main headline today, I have bought a new frying pan. It is a huge one that takes up one and a half hobs on the cooker. I can fit all my breakfast in it in one go. Its predecessor could only manage a few rashers of bacon and one egg. The importance of breakfast is paramount. Having been up working for three and a half hours, the 8am fry up is vital to keep my spirits, energy levels and cholesterol up. 

There are a few issues with recreating a home from home style full English breakfast. Firstly and most importantly is the quality of bacon, which is seriously lacking. They do not really do back bacon and tend to have shoulder or middle bacon. Admittedly it fits in a sandwich better but is the wrong shape and shrinks too much during frying. 

The sausages here are also not great. The traditional NZ sausage is made of beef, which to me seems a bit wrong. A lot of the sausages in the supermarket are labelled 'pork flavoured'. On closer inspection of the label, the top ingredient is 'meat (misc)', and this worries me! Proper sausages are really quite expensive, an accountant inspecting my weekly food budget might think my priorities are distorted. 

Here is this mornings feed:

Meanwhile on the farm, fertiliser in the form of urea is being applied to the fields. Because of the recent wet weather and the steep banks in the area, a tractor and spreader is ill-suited. A more mobile machine is required:

The chopper carries the spreader and flies pretty low over the fields he is fertilising. There are some serious air-acrobatics going on. When he banks around and turns sharply the bucket swings out to an almost horizontal position. I tried unsuccessfully to get a ride to show the driver which fields needed doing. He managed it by himself.

In other news, Daniel has gone back to Ireland for a few weeks and has been temporarily replaced by an Austrian girl called Dana. It is important to point out that she is from Austria and not Germany, it would be unwise for anyone else to make that mistake. The downside of having a female bungalow-mate is that now I have to be a lot tidier, and I am being made to do something called 'washing-up', which I am very suspicious about. Why clean a plate when it is being used for exactly the same food the next day? On the plus side I am being made lots of cups of tea, and I am no longer the newbie on the farm.

It is now truly an international workforce here, and on that note I finally put something up on the blank wall space in the sitting room.

And here is the latest weather report:

IT HAS FINALLY STOPPED RAINING! 

We had 40% of the expected annual rainfall in just two weeks. Which when combined with a lot of cows and a few quad-bikes made a lot of mud. We have managed to confine the ruined ground to just one 4.7 hectare paddock that will probably not recover and will need reseeding. The ground is drying off now though and the cows are calving on to cleaner grass.

The rain has been replaced with fog which hangs around all morning, lurking in the valleys and dips. It looks quite spectacular and a little bit lord-of-the-ringsy. Although it does freeze your face on the bikes.

Right that's all for now, back to the studio (the quadbike) and I'll be back in the next week to bring you more NZ news.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to comment and share amongst your peers.

8. Mud-calving

No, mud-calving isn't an extreme sport I have discovered out here, it is a phrase I have just invented to describe what is happening on the farm at the moment.

Since the start of August, the weather here in New Zealand, and in particularly North Otago, has taken a turn for the worst. There has been a lot of rain, and the authorities have issues a number of 'Rainfall Alerts'. I don't think the Kiwis are ones to overemphasize weather warnings. According to a local climate report, the rainfall reached a rate of 75 mm in a day and has been ever present in the form of cold drizzle. It is comfortingly miserable weather and is ensuring that I am not getting homesick.

I am taking all steps necessary to ensure that I remain warm and dry whilst I work;

My coat has neoprene cuffs on the wrist which are great at preventing water from running down the sleeve. Unfortunately, they are also great at retaining water, and will not dry out. It is the single worst feeling, at 4:45am, having just won a close battle at getting out of bed, pulling on cold wet clothes from the previous days work. The same damp torture is repeated after breakfast and again after lunch.

The cows and heifers haven been calving at a serious pace, which reached heights of 25 per day during the wettest part of the week. It has quietened down now though, to a steady rate of between 10 and 15 per day. We now have about 250 cows and heifers calved, and they are mostly getting into the swing of the milking routine, as am I.

Unfortunately, the incessant precipitation has caused the ground to become decidedly soggy, and when home to a large amount of cows, it becomes incredibly muddy. Lose-your-welly, need-two-quads-to-get-the-trailer-out, kind of muddy. It is starting to become reminiscent of the Somme. Cows calving on this kind of ground can be problematic and makes usually simple jobs a little more tricky.

I would have taken more photos of the mud, but I wasn't sure that it would mix well with the camera.

The cows are not particularly happy with the weather either as they trample half of their food before they eat it.

Normally to collect the calves from the paddock, we would drive the quad and trailer up to the calf, and put him/her in the trailer. When the ground becomes inaccessible to what are often incorrectly called 'All Terrain Vehicles', this becomes impossible. It is then necessary to wade through the mud, try and catch the calf, who is undoubtedly covered in mud and therefore very slippery, and then carry it back to the trailer. After a few steps in the ankle deep mud a calf, even when only a few hours old, becomes really quite heavy. As does ones clothes which become really quite muddy. But it is all good fun and really brings out the characters in both livestock and farm-workers!

 A freshly born calf is cleaned by its mother before the ground inevitably gets turned into mud.

After the calves are rescued from the mire, they are taken to the sheds where they are kept warm on a bed of sawdust, are fed on milk and meal and grow at an exponential rate. 

The sun made a rare and brief appearance when I took these photos of a couple of happy calves who have graduated to the outside pens:

On the whole though, calving is going well. Obviously there are always a few problems preventing successful, healthy parturition (a word I learnt at university), which mainly affect the birth of twins, or particularly big calves presented upside down, backwards, or with a leg pointing in the wrong direction. Assistance with calving is occasionally necessary. I had planned on getting a photograph of the next time I was pulling a calf out of its mother, but we have recently been lacking in dystocia (another degree level word), which is good news for the health of the herd. It is also good news for those of you who didn't want to see a photo of me with my hand somewhere warmer than usual and my sleeve drenched with various bovine bodily fluids!

That is all for now regarding the farm, I will be continuing to update this blog relatively regularly.

Thanks for reading and keep sharing.