First of June, 2010. That was the day I started my new job. Phaw what a freaken few days it’s been.
I know a lot of my “readers”1 don’t know what dairy farming involves, and I do intent to build a glossery on this website at some stage so I can explain the words I use on a page, and link to it in my posts.. without explaining every little bloody detail. Anyhow..
I jumped in the deep in! We started drying off on the 1st. Drying off entails sticking 2 tubes per teat into the cow, tube one kills all bacteria that is currently IN the “quarter” and the second is called “Teat seal”. It litterly seals the teat so no new infection can get into the quarter. So a cow has 4 quarters.. That’s 8 tubes per cow, times 5000 cows… You get the picture? Lets just say it was a HUGE operation and for the first couple of hours I inhaled a lot of teat spray2.
We did that for 3 days. No fucking shit. 3 days.
So today was the first day of no-milking at ALL. And Marg3 and I dealt with silage. Well, we opened the tapes for the tractor driver. Srs bizns.
We then put some “breaks” up for the cows,4. Try doing that in sweeds. Sweads, as I found today, grow above ground. Yep. Lovely massive arse bulbs I have to trawl through and put up fences. And the power is on both ends of the fence. So.. Interesting electric shock filled day.
Everyone I work with seems pretty cool, the big bosses actually muck in! Which is awesome to see. Spesh on a big operation like this one! There are a lot of foreigners, some of them their English isn’t so great. But neither is mine, so I really shouldn’t complain. Well.. written English.
The dinners? They’re GREAT! We’ve had roast, fish and potato, and last night we had bacon and egg pie. I’m not a big fan, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I ate it anyway… and it wasn’t half bad!
So all in all, I’m enjoying it. The hours are short5, the people are good to work with, and it’s all about team effort. I like that. I think, and hope, I’m going to like it here.
- all 3 of you [↩]
- Consisting of Iodine and other crap not to be inhaled by any living thing. [↩]
- My new flat mate [↩]
- Splitting the paddock up so they don’t eat it ALL in one go [↩]
- Compared to last season!! [↩]
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Comments (2)
Twitter: k_lliste
wrote::
Wow, sounds like it is going really well!! I’m happy for you
Even if the work sounds hard at least it seems better than your last job… from my point of view 
That is a shitload of work right there. :\
I looooove food and if food isn’t good, then nothing in the world is good haha.
I’m so glad the food is good, that’s for sure