Download - Jet And Emma welcome Brett to the farm
A DAY ON THE FARM FOR
BRETT
Hi My name is Brett
And this is my twin sister Emily. We are in year 6 at
Jamberoo Public School.Our school is part of the 2009
Picasso Cows program and Emily is helping to paint the cow. I am helping by writing a journal about my job on the
dairy farm.
Twins by birth but not by nature
Even though we are twins we are very different ( but we are still great mates)Emily is very artistic and musical. I like those things too but I like the outdoors and play lots of sport.My favourite sports are swimming and rugby.When I grow up I would like to fly fighter jets or be a carpenter – for now I am very happy farming in my spare time.
Emily
Brett
I started working on the dairy farm as part of my Rotary Junior Community Award
To complete my award I have to do a number of tasks.
Junior Rotary Community Award
Community Service
Physical Recreation
Social Experience
Community commemorations
Community meetings
Cultural exchange
Religious and spiritual experience
The Arts
Social Experience Activities
Community commemorations• I went to Kiama Council 150th Celebrations
Community meetings• I attended a P&C meeting
Cultural exchange• I had a meal with an Italian family
Religious and spiritual experience• I am going to the Nan Tien Temple @ Dapto
The Arts• I went to the Wollongong Art Gallery
Junior Rotary Community Award
cont…
Skills supervised by a tutor or a mentor
Emma mentored me on how to raise dairy calves
I also have to keep weekly records in the form of a weekly diary
Reward for Effort
Once I have completed all of the tasks my diary is assessed by my school supervisor whose name is Miss Garlic
My work is then sent away and I receive a certificate presented to me by my local Rotary Club
My tutor
My tutor for 10 weeks on the farm is Emma
She is the Clover Hill Dairies apprentice and is doing dairy skills as part of her HSC
Emma is in year 11 and has been working on the farm for 2 years
Emma loves the cows and they are very curious about
her
Emma loves the calves and they are adore her & they remember how she used to look after them
when they were babies.
This picture is an example of my new computer skills. Here I learnt how to turn a colour photo into back and white.
What Emma has taught me
Animal Welfare
Raising calves is like raising kids you should treat them like they are your family
Little calves need to live in a very clean environment and we clean their utensils every day
We make sure they have 4 litres of colostrum in the first 24 hours to give them immunity from infection
What Emma has taught me
cont..
Calves also get fed hay and pellets
They must also have clean fresh water at all times
We also fill their pens everyday with fresh pine shavings
The two health issues we have to watch for are scours and pneumonia
When the calves get scours we give them electrolytes ( just like human babies)
When they get pneumonia we give them medicine like calf Panadol, vitamins and antibiotics for 3 days
We feed them milk twice daily until they are 7 weeks old then we feed milk 1x daily until they are 12 weeks old
We make sure nothing is wasted- what the little calves don’t eat is feed to the big calves. When we do this we makes sure we do not give the big calves leftovers from sick baby calves
What Emma has taught me
cont..
Each calf is identified with 3 tags
One tag has number ( which is different for each calf
Another tag in the opposite ear has the calf’s name
The third tag has a microchip in it and is called an NLIS tag
NLIS is a scheme which allows traceability from paddock to plate
NLIS stands for National Livestock Identification Scheme
What Emma has taught me
cont..
Other skills I learnt
Lynne was my mentor for two things
Environmental stewardship-Landcare farming
Computer skills –PowerPoint presentations
Landcare farming
I learnt
how to plant trees and shrubs to increase biodiversity
How to sow grass by hand-broadcasting- to prevent wind and soil erosion
Other skills I learnt cont…
So lets start at the beginning I was lucky enough to help out around Lynne Strong’s dairy farm Clover Hill
Dairies and let me tell you I had a ball. On the farm I was put straight to work
When I first started I learnt lots of new skills
My first day was 8th of August I did lots ofPainting starting with the architraves for
the windows for Nick’s new house. Nick is Lynne’s son and he is the boss
I even got to put the undercoat on a baby Picasso Cow which
we are lending to the Landcare Artfest
Then Emma the apprentice came and took me up to the calf shelter were I was able to feed the calves and any thing else that needed to be done.
We had to disinfect some of the other
spare hutches and fill them with bedding
so that we could bring in more calves. Cleaning the hutches
is very hard work.
Emma and I had to then go and get the
new baby calves we are going to put in
the shed.
One of the calves was already out of the paddocks
so we only had to take it to the
shelter
The other calf was in the
paddock so it was up to
us to catch it
Unlike human babies, calves are generally able to walk within a few hours of birth and are able to run within a day or two.
As you can see Emma is pretty good at this.
She has had lots of practice!!!!!!
To take the calf to its new home we had to
walk through the milking shed
I HAD NEVER SEEN SO MUCH
POO IN MY LIFE!!!!!!
Anyway we eventually caught the calf and when we did Emma had to quickly herd the other cows away from the calf while I held it. Man r those calves strong.
When we had the 2 new baby calves in their new
homes Emma showed me how to feed them hay
and pellets. We also gave the fresh water
The calves soon learn how to drink out of a bucket. How funny is this calf . It stuck its head in so far…..
.. Her eyes are even covered
with milk.One of the
other calves soon licked it
off
This is Emma feeding the
calves. Brett is learning a lot from Emma
This is Erin. She has had a hernia operation and is in a
pen by herself.Erin thinks I am a lollipop
It was time for milking so Emma and Nick went off to milk but I wasn’t allowed yet so I went back down to Lynne’s house to paint some more of Nick’s new windows
Milking time and the long walk home
And back again
At about one o’clock I was told that I could come up to the Dairy to see how every thing works and it was so cool. Personally I think that it is the best dairy ever.
After milking I learnt to hose off all the
poo. The poo and the water go into two big
tanks and are irrigated back onto
the paddocks to grow the pasture
After Emma showed me around the dairy we then went back up to the calves to feed three of the calves some milk and let me tell you those calves can be greedy when they want something
When we had finished feeding the calves their milk it was time for Emma to go to the new farm where Emma milks the
cows all by herself. This is the new farm and this Emma’s favorite cow Magpie.
Magpie is very friendly
While we were down there Lyn’s husband Mick was also there planting seeds but he doesn’t sow them by hand he does it with a tractor and a machine he pulls behind called a direct drill.
The seeds are kept in this
compartment. There are many small tubes that shoot the seeds
down and into the soil. The seed then
shoots and you get nice green
grass.
When the wheels turn on this machine they rotate the seeds
in the seed compartment which
helps them to fall down the shoot
tubes
The way it works is one of the blades on the direct drill makes a gap in the ground and behind that blade is another blade that covers in the soil and in between is a little pipe that shoots out the seeds into the grass.
In the tractor there is a GPS that tells Mick were he has already planted
the seeds. This also enables him to work at night.
This is Brett
riding the Quad
Oh and I'm only posing on the bike as it is illegal to ride a motorbike if you are under 16. You must wear a helmet
when you ride a bike as quad bikes are very
dangerous
Week 10 and I have learnt to milk cows.
Awesome!!!!!
First we push this button which will
give the cups a vacuum and this will allow them to
start to suck out the milk.
When were finished milking we have to
hose out the dairy so that its nice and clean for the next milking
My next new skill
Environmental stewardship and Landcare Farming
Clover Hill Dairies has won many awards and is the 2009 NSW Landcare Heroes Primary Producer Award winner
Lynne and her family and
neighbours spend a lot of time
looking after the environment on their farm and I am helping them
do this for the next 10 weeks as
part of my Rotary Program
The creek bed we are working on has been cleaned to remove all the invasive weeds. We had to plant the grasses to help prevent erosion caused by water and wind.
On the first day we planted 400
grasses and some trees to stop
erosion in the creek bed and
increase the plant biodiversity.I am learning lots about the
environment and lots of new
words such as biodiversity
which means the different types of living things on
the earth
What I was told to do was to get two buckets of ryegrass and
spread (called broadcasting) it evenly on the
bare dry patches.
Each week after that my main job was planting rye-grass in the bare
areas to help hold the soil together.
Ryegrass is a grass thatgrows really well in winter whereas the
other grass on the farm-kikuyu grows well in
summer and dies off in the winter.
When we finished planting it was time to water them in so another man come down with a 300
litre tank of water and I was sent down
to water it all ,and once that water and
the wind hit your hands I guess you could say that you wish your hands
had really hot heaters in them.
At the end of my 10 weeks we had got a
lot of work done and everyone was very
pleased.This is me with all the
neighbour volunteers under the big strangler fig
Soon it was spring and all the reptiles started coming out of
hibernation. They have red belly black snakes and lots of diamond
pythons and blue tongue lizards on the farm .
This is a diamond python and they are not poisonous. It was in the
garden where I was painting so we encouraged it to find some other
place to sit in the sun
This is Jamie , Lynne’s next door
neighbour with a big python.
Jamie likes to pat them
Mmh I don’t think I will try that
Best news yet
Lynne and Michael and Nick have offered me a job
I will now be working at the farm for 4 hrs each week on Saturday
My other friends are working at the local IGA Grocery store and I am very happy I have an outside job
A DAY ON THE FARM FOR
BRETT
I love working on the farm.
Everyday I learn more about the
people, the cows and the processes
that help make out dairy products
This slide show is a Brett W
production for
Picasso Cows 2009
With special thanks toLynneNickMichael TimAnd especially Emma for all their help
Acknowledgements
All photographs in this presentation are the property of the Strong's and should not be used without permission
I have permission
My little dude has been borrowed from the web http://icecreamjournal.turkeyhill.com/index.php/2008/08/20/ask-ernie-8-questions-8-answers/