Hi all. As I write, the thunder is echoing around the hills and light rain is falling. Grass is no longer in shortage, and the cows appreciate it. Production is up 13% for the season, with the girls still holding at 1.32 kg MS/day, on OAD. I went OAD on 27th December and then started […]
Once again it’s time to reflect on what’s happened in the last couple of months. Age must be catching up with me as time seems to go by so quickly it becomes hard to think back on what has happened. While we were down south we took the opportunity to bike the Roxborough trail. A […]
For those who thought I had disappeared off the face of the earth I am still here, just turned into a bit of a hermit. I thought I had better update you on what’s been happening. Things have been plodding along since I last wrote. Seems like all I’ve done is the basic things that […]
Once again it’s time to reflect on the month gone by. Looking back I wonder where the time has gone and what did I do with it? The list of jobs to be done is certainly no shorter and the things that I wanted to do haven’t been done either. Still, it was the festive season […]
Animal cruelty Well, the Sunday TVNZ show was disgusting: the way the media/SAFE have portrayed all of us in our industry as animal abusers. I have a few points to make about this: WE ARE NOT ALL LIKE THIS!! What was shown is 1% of the industry, and as far as I’m concerned they need […]
Mating Well, we are 6 days into mating and the cows are cycling like crazy. We have mated 128 of 290 so far but I have a wee confession to make….. The last blog I said we were going to milk the 2 and 3yr cows on OAD, but spring never came so we put […]
Howdy all, We are now well into January and the cows have settled into once a day milking. We always switch on January 1st. This is supposed to give us more free time but it seems to be taken up doing jobs that I was meant to do before calving. The farm seems to be […]
Our Journey We farm 74 effective hectares of consolidated peat at Tauhei, north of Hamilton, Waikato. We started with an all Friesian herd and have progressively moved to a crossbred herd since then. Over the years we have tried many different farming practices, from TAD milking and achieving great results, then venturing into OAD milking […]