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/