54. Drizzly Goings On

I thought I would give you an update of what has been going on on the farm.

It has mostly been raining, not heavily but consistently. The ground is soft, and driving along the cow tracks on the bikes means you end up with a face splattered with mud looking like a Dalmatian. You know the tracks are muddy when there is so much muck on the underside of the quad that the exhaust smokes every time you stop.

Some of the cows have been dried off or culled now, leaving a milking herd of 426, although this puts less pressure on the grazing, the weather really isn't helping.

This picture shows where the cows walked alongside a reel to reach the fresh grass.

I can see this paddock across the creek from where I am sitting now in the kitchen. It still doesn't look very green, even after another few days of continuous washing from above.

The gateways to the paddocks take a beating too, the soil here is at times pretty clayey, which when wet gets very slippy. I have planted myself on my arse more than a few times in the last couple of days. The cows when going down these skiddy exits from the paddocks tend to plant there front feet and try and walk with their back legs. It is a bit like an bovine snowmobile with the skis at the front and the drive at the back.

I took a picture of this gateway before and after the cows came through, obviously I didn't want the cows to mess it up, but the 'after' picture is not as severe as some of the others which was a little disappointing

BEFORE

AFTER

.

In other news, we will be drying all the cows in the next three or four days. They will each receive intra-mammary antibiotic treatment to reduce the risk of mastitis, and then a nice winter holiday away from milking while the calves inside them grow. We will dry them off in two blocks of late and early calvers over two days. They will then be walked down the road to the run-off block. The return journey to the original 'Big Muster' (see blog post 5). You can probably expect a blog post about all that excitement!

In food news, I liberated Daniel's slow-cooker from his kitchen whilst I was visiting. At the moment, it is cooking some beef stew, it has been on for about four hours, and will probably keep going for another four or five more. I am very excited to eat it tonight, and tomorrow and probably the next day too if there are still leftovers.

In it is a combination of stewing stake and some topside, as well as spuds, carrot, onion and mushrooms and some stock. I am going for the simple but hearty method. Although the weather is fine now, if it turns out to be miserable again, then this is the perfect food.

That'll be it for today. I will leave you with a picture of 1444, one of the personalities I will miss when I go home in just over three weeks.

53. Canterbury Flat Farm

Last weekend I hopped in the car to go and visit my former colleague and bungalow-mate Daniel on the farm near Rakaia, where he now works.

I didn't drive there directly. I took a very out of the way route, for two reasons. Firstly because I wanted to see Lake Tekapo - I had heard it was a lake worth seeing, and secondly because I didn't think it would add three whole hours on to my journey. As photogenic lakes go, I have seen a few now. The ones on the Waitaki were as always, spectacular. As I drove past the crystal clear water, edged with trees of varying autumnal shades of rust, my trigger finger started twitching so I jumped out of the car and took a few snaps. 

As I drove North the mountains got higher and snowier and at Lake Tekapo, the scene in front of me looked decidedly more wintery.

When I eventually got to Daniel's, the 'Roast of the Day' and a few handles of Speight's at the pub did the trick to pick me up from what turned out to be a five hour drive. 

I was very jealous of the woodburner that was dominating his new accommodation. With a free supply of logs he can keep his house toasty, while here at mine, we have just one heater which savages the electricity bill. What was even more impressive was the cage around it, the previous occupants must have had kids, or maybe they kept large predators in it. To call the cage sturdy is a massive understatement, but at a guess I would say it was at least bear-proof. 

The next morning I was taken on the tour of the farm, as is obligatory for anyone who goes to see someone who lives on a farm. It is pretty different to where I work, which is probably one of the steepest dairy farms in New Zealand. The main difference being it is pretty much completely flat. That is due its location on the flood plains of the very wide Rakaia River. Looking on Google maps the area looks pretty cool, and gives you an idea of the scale of the river. You can also see the obvious shapes of dairy farm paddocks, dictated by the pivot irrigation. 

At Rakaia (off the map), the road and rail bridges that span the water are the longest in the country at 1.75 km (over a mile) in length.

Anyway back to the farm tour. Mounted on two-wheeler bikes we set off for a look around. The weather was disappointingly grey, and the country probably didn't look its finest. 

Milking approx 580 cows (mostly small ginger ones), 'Dairy 2' is one of eight or nine dairies that make up a pretty large business of over 2000 ha (Canterbury Grasslands). These numbers and any more I include are partially guessed, I have slept numerous times and also drank alcohol since I was told them, so the accuracy may not be great.

The milking platform had a couple of big pivots on it, these roll over the fences, so the electric wire is kept pretty slack. This is very handy for crossing over a fence on the bikes, using the old 'boot holding the wire to the ground whilst the wheels go over' technique. This is a lot trickier to do on a quad bike, unless of course you are a lanky gymnast. Which I am not. 

So I followed Daniel about the paddocks, keeping a safe distance away to avoid being sprayed with mud from his rear wheel which had a very inadequate mudguard. 

Every now and then we would stop, and I would ask some interesting dairying questions, and then I would comment on how flat it was.

When I was visiting, about half the herd had been dried off, they were eating straw with their grass.

The other half still being milked (also 16 hourly), were getting palm kernel as a side dish. This is a supplement feedstuff that is quite popular in NZ. From what I gather, it is mostly fibre, and contains a fair bit of oil which helps keep milk fat up.

Here is a big shed of it, and then the cows digging in.

The milking shed did not look fun to milk in. Apparently because of the shorter stature of the Filipino workers that are pretty popular in the area, they had to raise the pit floor. Bashing your head on the pipes above became a real risk for those of us of normal height. There was also a ramp down too, I don't know, maybe for wheelchair access? It is a 50 a-side shed, which is getting quite long, at this size they usually bend them in a circle and call them a rotary.

A few thing stood out from this farm, not just the huge stones littered across the paddocks, but the way the pasture was grazed down to carpet length. With no silage, it is a pretty low input system, but the cows seemed happy enough.

The stand out feature of the place was the irrigation though, it can get very dry on the Canterbury Plains and this impressive set-up helps to combat that.

These huge pumps will be able to move a ridiculous amount of water.

There are two types of pivot irrigation used, this is one of the huge fixed pivots:

And this smaller pivot is dragged around by tractor and plugged into one of a number of hydrants in the paddock. It is also perfect to rub against to get those hard to reach itches!

Righto, that is all I have for you today. Keep reading!

52. Still Milking It

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with great relief that I can now finally present my long awaited short film on milking.

It is not an easy job filming whilst milking, it is kind of a situation where three hands would be ideal. Or a complete camera crew. Anyway the product of much frustration and the mixing of water and electrical devices is here.

As always, best watched on a larger screen.




Hope you enjoy it!