Crunch time

January 26, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 4 Comments

The pastures are still green but they’re barely growing and, now, we must make hard decisions about what to feed and to whom.

Already, we’re feeding seven rolls of silage (each weighing about 800 kg) and a very hearty meal of grain to the milkers and if I want to keep the cows milking really well, I’ll need to step that up even more in the next few weeks. Any cow who is not producing at least 10 litres of milk per day is not paying her way. If she’s in calf, we will let her take a holiday. If not, we must sell her. Fortunately, the vast majority of cows are in calf, so we should be able to keep almost every one.

The reality that farm animals are working animals rather than pets is one of the hardest lessons of life but a valuable one, I think. Farm kids learn from an early age that the circle of life is inescapable but it is in a farmer’s power, though, to make every life a good one. What an awesome privilege.

How many kids die on Australian farms each year? Each week?

January 24, 2012January 24, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / Leave a comment

You can see from my blog that I take our children pretty much everywhere with me on the farm. The thing is, there are places I no longer go, so they can stay safe. I don’t milk, I don’t get into the yard when it’s full of cows and I avoid situations where cattle of any age are moving quickly in confined spaces.

I can make these choices because we can afford to pay other people to help but not every farmer can. And out here, the town’s youngest children have access to just two hours’ formal care per week.

If you don’t have an extended family willing and able to help, you might feel there’s little choice but to leave the kids playing by the gate or sitting in the ute while you do a risky job. This is how farm safety and childcare are so tightly connected. There’s nothing bourgeoise about needing childcare to drench the heifers or build a fence.

The impact of a lack of childcare on a farming community is tricky to gauge but the unfathomable grief that seeps through a community after the death of a child is something that resonates in your bones for many years. According to the stats, one child is killed on an Australian farm every fortnight.

I wouldn’t normally include a whole slab of stats but these, from the Aghealth Australia site, are so telling:

A recent study by the National Farm Injury Data Centre (NFIDC) based at AgHealth of on-farm fatalities for the 2001-2004 period found that:

Children (0-14yrs) make up 15-20% of farm injury deaths, around 2/3 are male. Main agents are:

Drowning in dams (mostly under five year olds)

Quad bikes or 4 wheeled motorbikes

Farm vehicles (cars, utes)

Around quarter of all child deaths were visitors to the farm, but for quad bikes around ½ are visitors

Drowning accounts for around 35-40% on child farm deaths, with farm dams being by far the most common site.

There has been an improvement in the reduction of toddler drowning on farms in recent years – particularly a reduction of dam drownings, which have halved since the early nineties. However, drowning is still the number one cause of child farm fatality in Australia. A common scenario is that a toddler wanders away from the home un-noticed into farm water bodies or toward other farm hazards (vehicles, mobile machinery). Apart from dams, children can find their way into creeks, troughs, dips and channels. Children under five years are at greatest risk.

For non-fatal injury of children on farms, older children (5 -15 yrs) figure more prominently – particularly in relation to injury from 2 and 4 wheeled motorbikes (and horses). Whilst there tend to be more hospital ED presentations for 2 wheeled motorbikes, injuries from quad bikes are likely to be more severe or fatal, with 4 times as many children being killed off ATV’s than 2 wheel motorbikes on farms (NFIDC 2007).

Sprinkle the cow track with rose petals

January 23, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments

If I could, I’d sprinkle the cow track with rose petals! The cows average a 3.6km walk to and from the dairy every day and can easily become quite tender-footed, so the surfaces they walk on are incredibly important. If you can’t walk on it barefoot, you can’t expect your cows to walk on it either.

When a tractor window got smashed on the track, the only thing for it was to sweep all the glass up. Nearly broke Old Macdonald’s back!

Sweeping the track as Alex enjoys a hammock ride

The track is soft gravel for maximum cow comfort while providing a relatively mud-free surface. Last year, when the wet was at its worst and the cows’ feet were extra soft, we had loads of pine mulch spread on the tracks to provide more cushioning. Mulch works really well but unfortunately traps mud and eventually breaks down into a horrible mushy gumboot-gobbling goop.

The dairy yard is concreted for durability. Because smooth concrete can get too slippery for the cows, one of our first farm improvements was to have diamond-shaped grooves cut. The grooves help to drain the concrete and make it more grippy without becoming abrasive.

What a groovy place to hang out

Take to the tractor if you can’t get baby to sleep

January 20, 2012January 20, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments

At 8pm, which happens to be “acid hour” for Alex, a truck carrying four pallet loads of calf feed arrived. The calf feed comes in unsealed bulk bags and forecast drizzle would wreck it, so the stuff had to be moved to shelter before long.

I was singing “Pop goes the Weasel” for the millionth time and Wayne had fallen asleep cuddling Zoe.

Wayne had told the feed guy it was okay to deliver late but when push came to shove, he couldn’t be woken despite repeated attempts. On the other hand, Alex couldn’t sleep. The only thing to do was put on the baby carrier and jump in the tractor.

Milk Maid Marian and baby Alex brush up their loader skills

Alex and I brush up our loader skills

But, jeepers, it took me forever and I was like a jack in the box, checking and double-checking I wasn’t skewering a bag in the pitch black driveway. Alex was fast asleep by the time I had the first pallet loaded up though and I might just blow stockfeed Scott a kiss for the unconventional but effective baby soothing lesson.

All done!

Dining on data is good for the bottom (line)

January 20, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 8 Comments

Farm management meeting

Depending on how you look at it, dairy farmers are very trusting, natural exhibitionists or visionaries. I say this because I have always been amazed by how readily we share the most confidential of our information with our counterparts – right down to the profitability of our farms per litre, hectare and even per cow.

I have just joined the ranks of these exhibitionists by submitting our farm’s data to Frank Tyndall, who oversees a project called Tracker that benchmarks dairy farms across all sorts of productivity measures.

The results offer an incredible amount of information that require some very thoughtful interpretation. Great fodder for discussion with our farm consultant, Matt Harms.

Unsurprisingly, we have achieved a lowly rank. Our dryland (or “rain-fed” if you’re feeling optimistic) farm is being compared to those in the Macallister Irrigation District (MID), where water when you need it is pretty much assured. We have just come out of an impossibly wet year that has depressed production in the growing season and, now, the dry has set in.

We may end up winning the wooden spoon but I’m not concerned. The race here is to a greater discipline when it comes to farm management, which should reap efficiency dividends and make our farm more resilient.

Simple stupidity reigns supreme

January 18, 2012January 18, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 6 Comments

The paddock wrapped around the dam has suffered from months of saturation – to the point where about half a hectare has been unusable. It sits in the path of the dam spillway and the record wet of 2011 left the dam overflowing all year.

The spillway "swamp"

Now, there’s a way to avoid this. A small manual diaphragm pump sits on the dam wall and allows us to siphon water over the edge through the natural waterway that runs through the heart of the farm.

It hasn’t been used for years but I have memories of my thin elderly father getting it going very easily. When Wayne and I had a go last autumn though, the thing just flipped up and down so ridiculously easily we knew it wasn’t sucking properly. A quick investigation revealed a perished rubber diaphragm, which we had replaced. Then the PVC pipe through the dam wall turned out to be broken. Fixed that. Ready, set, still no go. It was so hard to pump that Wayne turned beetroot red with the effort and finally, the cast lever arm snapped in the willing arms of Rob the plumber.

Turns out the diaphragm was upside down and now even Zoe can work it.

Working the siphon is much easier now

Hallelujah!

At last, the water flows (where we want it)

And the stupidity? If this whole litany of mini-disasters wasn’t enough, I was soooo excited to get it going today that I forgot I was flooding tonight’s paddock and had to stop it again a mere 45 minutes after doing a victory dance. Ah well. As @Sam_Grains would say, “Keep calm, farm on”.

Nightmarish scenes on farm because dogs loved too much

January 16, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 2 Comments

The only thing worse for a young girl than the sight of a sheep mauled to death is knowing that there will be more laying by the riverside trying to breathe through open wounds in their throats.

The appearance of feral cats around our home and @OwdFred’s haunting description of his traumatised cattle stirred a terrifying memory of childhood autumn mornings at my grandparents’ sheep farm. For weeks, my father lay awake with his gun in darkened paddocks and for weeks, he returned with that gun and me in the crisp light of dawn to find and relieve the dead and dying of their suffering.

I must have been about 10 at the time and it was my job to stand in the back of the ute to spot striken sheep as he drove slowly back and forth along the riverbank. Some sheep simply drowned in their attempt to flee from the predators, others crashed through fences and, inevitably, the young and old suffered the most.

When a neighbour had 100 sheep penned and lost 30 overnight, the story hit the news with appeals for all dog owners to contain their pets at night but still the carnage continued.

Then, one night during Dad’s vigil, a pack of dogs appeared and began its ugly sport. Dad fired as many shots as he could, clipping one dog’s ear. It turned out these dogs were local pets who “wouldn’t hurt a fly”. Bored dogs allowed to roam free at night. Pampered pooches with blood lust.

Instead of fanciful schemes to track the “black panther”, one day I hope we will instead look to our own backyards.

Just getting some extra cred

January 15, 2012January 15, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 1 Comment

Remember Zoe and Pearlie Girlie?

Zoe and Pearlie Girlie back in November

Well, since I wrote about the tender relationship between young farmer and young cow, Pearlie Girlie decided to make a grab for power and began to scare me – taking a few aggressive strides towards Zoe and wagging her head. We’ve been making sure Zoe stays well clear of the little cow but, today, Zoe reclaimed her rightful position as boss.

Zoe is boss once more

Why you shouldn’t write a blog

January 14, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 6 Comments

It’s a lot of fun writing the Milk Maid Marian dairy blog and I’d love to see more Australian dairy farmers blogging too.

When I get a few minutes to talk to other dairy people at the Australian Dairy Conference in a few weeks, I’m hoping one or two will be inspired to begin the conversation online. But why should they? The 365-day commitment of dairying makes them very busy people by definition. And why should we constantly have to justify ourselves to everyone else as one reader of The Land asked?

“The Aussie Farmer has to wonder if he has any hope when people supposedly representing us – such as Matt Linegar in his role with the NFF perpetuate the idea that we need a “social licence to operate”. Wake up! Australian food is some of the best food in the world – grown at world quality standards. If you run off the Australian farmer through whatever measure – you are still going to need to eat. Where is the food going to come from then? Will they give two hoots about “social licences”? Truly hungry people care about not starving. Another cost we will be expected to bear.”
Posted by Frustrated Farmer, 9/01/2012 10:54:23 AM

The Frustrated Farmer makes quite a few points in this single paragraph. First, Australian food production is world-class and should be appreciated; second, we need to produce food; and then there’s the hint that maybe our leaders ought to be handling the advocacy on our behalf. All good points.

I write the blog because I am disappointed that there’s so little available online for consumers who don’t swallow the misinformation of extremist groups without asking questions. I’m really grateful that there are Aussies out there who care enough about the things that matter to me (animals, country living, the land and great food) to want to know more about what farmers do and why we do it.

I also admire the men and women who give up lots of their time to selflessly represent agriculture at endless meetings or, as @payntacow does, by inviting them into their farms (aka homes) to experience farming first-hand. Then, there are the thousands of other dairy farmers who donate their time to the CFA, the SES or the kindergarten fundraising committee. This is something I cannot do, so I write the blog.

The generosity of people from all walks of life is a constant source of inspiration. If you’re a dairy farmer thinking of blogging, do it if you want to but, for goodness’ sake, not if it’s just another impost.

Salmonella wipes the smiles from our faces

January 13, 2012 / dairymilkmaid / 7 Comments

All four of us were enjoying sending the cows to the crop this afternoon sun when we realised something was wrong with one of our young cows. 1201 is not normally at the back of the herd but this afternoon she just wanted to bumble along slowly. This little cow is extra special to me because she was the first calf to be born after I took over the reins of the family farm and I always smile when I see her. Not today.

As I drew up beside her, I saw she was breathing heavily and to my horror, I found orange mucus trickling from her nostrils. We called the vet and nudged her gently along the track to the crush for an examination.

Pete arrived and checked for sugars in her urine, smelled her manure and found mucus in it, listened to her gut, heart and lungs, then reached into her gullet. The diagnosis: salmonella. Pete took a blood sample to confirm the diagnosis and ascertain the strain so we can respond appropriately if more cows fall ill, prescribed a course of antibiotics to fight the infection and delivered fluids straight to her gut to keep her hydrated.

We suspect the source of the contamination may have been the wildlife attracted by the crop and the dam (ducks love eating rape). Because salmonella infections in cattle can be passed on to humans, we will be washing our hands with the zeal of Lady Macbeth from now on.

The little cow is now in quarantine close to the house where we can keep an extra close eye on her and offer plenty of TLC.