This summer (winter season here) I am working as an intern for the
Ashton farm of Bel GROUP Farms, Ltd. in the Hawkes Bay area of New Zealand.
Planning for this internship goes back to the week of World Dairy Expo this
past October, when I made contact with John Roche of DairyNZ who started
searching on my behalf for any possible internship in New Zealand. In February John
contacted me with an offer to work for Bel GROUP Farms, Ltd. and I started the planning process of contacting
Bel GROUP, purchasing flight tickets, and setting up the internship to gain
credits. Thanks to the support of the Dairy Science Department and Ag Hall’s
International Program at UW-Madison, I was able to get enough scholarship money
to pay for the trip over. In the end, all of the planning for this internship
went very smoothly – everything sort of just fell into place.
And finally, after countless hours of planning, packing, and travel, I can say…greetings from Bel GROUP's Ashton Farm in Waipukurau, New
Zealand!!!
So my first blog is only a little short of a novel, but as
most would expect I have learned so much since I left that I feel it would be
good to write everything down now since I have the time and can still remember (mostly). I am hoping this blog
will serve the following purposes:
1.
Communicate with friends and family on what life
is like as a Kiwi (New Zealander)
2.
Compare and contrast dairy farming in New
Zealand with the US
3.
A daily journal to record my thoughts, memories, and
reflections
4.
Provide reports for my internship credits
through UW-Madison
Travel
My first flight left Minneapolis at 2:55 PM on Saturday, May
26 and arrived in LAX by 5 PM (LA time) and was rather uneventful but went
well. Once at LAX I retrieved my luggage and checked in to Air New Zealand for
my flight to Auckland that left at 10:30 PM. After a little bit of shifting my
luggage between suitcases to reduce the weight of my carry-ons, I made my way
to the departure gate where I waited and made my last few calls.
Picture from my window just before passing over Las Vegas to LAX.
At 9:45 PM I boarded for my flight and at 10:30 PM we were
off. I sat next to a wonderful New Zealander named Lila. Lila introduced
herself to me while we were waiting at the gate before take-off, asking if I had
ever been to New Zealand before and what I was going to be doing. She lives in
Auckland now but has also lived in Australia and the US. Once in the air, the
staff served supper and I tried to watch a movie but fell asleep for about 4
hours. Afterwards I woke up and watched 2 movies until the staff served
breakfast 2 hours before landing. Somewhere above the Pacific Ocean we crossed
the international dateline, and it suddenly became Monday. The city of Auckland
came into view while it was still dark out – a sprawling city of light
surrounded by water – and we landed shortly after. I made it through customs
smoothly after picking up my checked luggage, said goodbye to Lila, checked my
bags for my short connecting flight to Napier (only 40 minutes), and went to my
gate on the domestic side of the airport.
Day 1 – Monday May 28, 2012
At 10:30 AM I landed in a tiny airport of the town of Napier
in the Hawkes Bay area of New Zealand. Waiting for me was Josh Dondertman, half
of the management team for the Ashton farm. He and his wife, Rebecca (Becs for
short) manage the 2600 cow dairy herd, which is one of seven farms owned by Bel
GROUP Farms, Ltd. Josh and I left the airport after I tried to get in the wrong
side of the car (like Europe the driver sits on the right side of the car and
they drive on the other side of the road) It took about 1 hour until we reached
Josh and Becs’ home in the small town of Waipukurau (AKA Waipak for short).
Once home, I was able to set my stuff down and change before Josh drove me to
Waipak to run some errands, then to the farm to introduce me to Becs, and then
to meet Justine Dalton, my internship coordinator) at the Bel GROUP office.
Afterwards I met the owner of Bel GROUP and got a pair of coveralls, rain
jacket, and boots for my stint as an intern here. By the time we got home it
was around 5 PM, already dark (remember its winter here), and I was so tired!
Becs was back from the farm by then and we ate supper. I went to bed by 8 PM,
exhausted from almost 36 hours of travel.
Josh and Becs's house where I am living.
Day 2 – Tuesday May 29, 2012
This morning I woke up at 6:15 AM, ate breakfast with Josh
and Becs, and rode to the farm with them at 7 AM. Once at the farm I shadowed
Rhoxus (a middle-aged Filipino employee that has worked at Ashton for 5 years
now) in the milking “chute” (milking parlor).
Most of the milkers at the Ashton farm are of Filipino decent (which is
becoming more and more common in New Zealand), except for Rav, a young intern
about my age from India. While milking I met Rodel and Bong (both middle-aged
Filipinos with families), and David (New Zealander in charge of feeding) and
Basil (also a New Zealander).
Dairy farming in New Zealand, unlike in the US, is almost
exclusively pasture-based with seasonal calving. The Ashton farm is also a pasture-based,
rotational grazing farm but is the largest farm in the Hawkes Bay area with 600 hectares (1500 acres) of land. The
farm currently milks about 1700 cows in a 60-cow rotary “chute” (milking parlor).
The farm recently finished calving in 900 cows for their fall calving season
(March – May) and are working to dry off 600 more cows by the end of next week
that will be their spring calvers (August – October). During the winter season
(June – August) they will only be milking 1100 cows. Currently there are 4
“herds” (groups we would call them), each with about 450 cows, plus a small pen
of about 100 lame cows that stay in pastures close to the parlor, and a pen of
about 30 treated cows that get milked. “Caps on” (milking) begins at 5:30 AM
and takes until about noon. There is enough time for the employees to have
lunch and take a nap before they return for the evening milking, which begins
at 2 PM and ends around 6:30 PM. The afternoon milking takes less time because
the lame cows only get milked once a day.
60-cow rotary parlor at Ashton milk about 400 cows an hour!
Once down with milking, Josh showed me how to drive the
farm’s 4-wheeler, which we took home through the “races” (lanes) between the
pastures that lead back to the house. There I had a quick lunch and returned to
the farm by 1 PM, where I met Sam (a New Zealand intern a little older than me
who started at Ashton about 6 weeks ago). Sam, Basil, and I set up a weighing
scale at a corral about a ½ mile down the road from the farm to weigh milk
calves that were born in the past couple months during the fall calving season.
Then the fun began. I rode with Sam on the 4-wheeler while Basil rode a dirt bike.
We rode back down the road to a pasture across from the farm to drive the rest
of the milk calves that needed to be weighed down the road to the corral. It
went a lot smoother than I could have anticipated, even while crossing the
intersection that is halfway between the farm and the corral we were going to.
The fence lines on both sides of the road really help to guide the calves. Once
in the corral, the calves were dewormed and weighed, and any calf over 80kg for
Fresians and over 75kg for crossbreds (Fresians x Jerseys) was separated from
the others to be weaned. Sam and I went back to another pasture down the road
to get the calves he had weighed and weaned yesterday. We drove them back to
the corral with a little help from some guys that drove by, since it was me
(the rookie) driving the 4-wheeler and Sam on the dirt bike, trying to move the
hungry calves that had just been weaned the day before. Once back to the corral
Basil dewormed these calves while Sam and I separated the light calves into
three smaller groups. After we were all done we had to drive the light calves
down the road, back to three different pastures, where they will be fed milk
for another two weeks, and weighed again until they are heavy enough to be
weaned. Lastly, the newly weaned calves were driven down the road near the farm
to their own pasture.
By the time we were done moving and weighing calves it was 6
PM and already dark out. After taking down the scale at the corral, Sam
realized he had lost his phone in the afternoon’s adventure so we drove around
in the truck, calling it with Josh’s phone to try to find it with no luck.
After a long first day, I drove the 4-wheeler back to the
house where we ate supper and I went to bed.
Day 3 – May 30, 2012
This morning I woke up at 6:30 AM and drove the 4-wheeler to
the farm by 7:30. I was in charge of giving shots of vitamin B12 in the parlor
to all milking cows with tail chalk on them. I gave shots to herds 3 and 4, the
lame cows and the treated cows this morning. After milking was done, all the
milkers, myself, and Sam helped to dry treat ~70 cows. At 12:30 PM I went home
for lunch and was back to the farm by 1:45 PM for a quick meeting and then to
give shots for herds 1 and 2 in the afternoon milking. By 4:30 PM I was done
for the day and came back to the house, took some pictures, and started
writing.
View of the sunrise over the cows on my drive to work this morning
View of the sun setting over the mountains after work today
Day 4 – May 31, 2012
Lesson of the day: the grass is ALWAYS greener on the other
side of the fence…as demonstrated by the cows at Ashton.
Today I was at the farm by 7:30 AM. Sam and I spent the
morning driving 2 herds of dry cows to the cow chute next to the parlor to be
tagged. I drove my trusty 4-wheeler and Sam took the motor bike (don’t worry,
we wear helmets!). This week all 2600 cows on the farm are being tagged with an
electronic ID system that will be read while the cows are being milked in the
parlor. This will allow for specific cows to be automatically sorted once they
exit the parlor, eliminating the need for one worker to manually sort cows
during milking. It took us until noon to move these 2 herds of cows to the
parlor and sort out a small group of specially-marked cows out of one of these
herds. We were about to move this small group of cows to another pasture with
another herd of dry cows when it started pouring. We sped back to the farm, mud
flying everywhere since the “races” (cow lanes) were really muddy. Luckily, I
was wearing the heavy rain jacket and coveralls the farm gave me on Monday so
only my face was wet. Sam, however, was soaked. It poured for about 15 minutes
and then stopped, marking time for lunch.
Driving the 4-wheeler to drive the cows down the "race" to another pasture.
Every month Bel GROUP put on a barbeque at one of the farms.
Today it was held at Ashton so I was able to meet some of the workers from the
other farms. I was asked to write an article for the June Bel GROUP newsletter,
introducing myself and writing about the similarities and differences I have
noticed so far about dairying in the US vs. New Zealand.
At about 1:30 PM Sam and I went back and finished putting
the newly tagged dry cows back to their pastures, and separating some of the
pastures into smaller paddocks using portable fence posts and fence lines.
There are 80 pastures at Ashton used for the rotational grazing and most of
these are split into smaller paddocks for cows to graze on. Once a herd of cows
have eaten that down, the paddock is enlarged so the cows can be given fresh
grass. Josh is the mastermind behind making sure the pastures are rotated
properly and managing the cows so they are the correct body condition according
to their stage of lactation.
By 3:30 PM Sam and I were done so I helped finish tagging
the last of the dry cows for the day. About 500 cows got tagged today, and more
will be done tomorrow. At 5 PM I left the farm, came back to the house, and ate
supper with Becs and Josh. Tomorrow will be an early, long day, since the vet
will be there after morning milking to put in 200 CIDRs into cows. In order to
be able to do this in the parlor during the time between milkings, the morning
milking will start an hour early at 4:30 AM, and I will need to be there to
sort out the CIDR cows.
Cows out in pasture.
Good night!
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