Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 5.
Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 5.
Placement: Kilpatrick Holding Trust, Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia
As I’d said in my last update that I’d hurt my back and as my girlfriend had booked to come to come over and visit we felt it would be a waste to not travel when we were there. Starting on the 7th of February we stayed 2 nights in Melbourne visiting the Eureka Sky deck, Melbourne’s highest public observation deck which is 88 floors up. Having visited Melbourne a couple of times during my trip it was great to see it from a totally different angle. From Melbourne we hired a car and travelled down the Great Ocean Road staying in Apollo bay before visiting The Twelve Apostles which are a collection of limestone stacks off the shore, after this we visited the “Sungold Field Days” which I talked about in my last post. After the Field Days we headed back to the farm to show Kirsty where I’d been for the last 6 months before heading out for tea with Shane our 2 IC and a few other friends from Koroit. The following day the chiropractor I had been seeing took us out over the great ocean road and Twelve Apostles in this own 4 man plane before we headed up to Colac where there was a BnS (similar to a young farmers bbq) we managed to get 30+mm of rain but was still a great night. We then headed back to the farm to collect my bags before driving to Melbourne, probably the longest days driving I done over there lasting about 4 or 5 hours between the 2 trips.
From Melbourne we flew to Sydney for 5 nights, the apartment we stayed in was about 10 minutes walk from Darling Harbour, which alone was brilliant especially at night, from Darling Harbour we were able to get a boat to Sydney zoo, this took us round under the Sydney harbour bridge and stopped beside the Opera house to pick up more people, . The zoo its self was really good with loads of Australian animals especially kangaroos where you could talk through the enclosure with them. As well as the zoo we also took the sk
Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 4
Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 4.
Placement: Kilpatrick Holding Trust, Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia
Since my last check in I’ve had another busy month. We’ve been drying off about 400+ cows so far in preparation for autumn calving; they aim to calve most the cows in autumn as the rain and grass growth increases so the cows will hit peak yield on grass and most of the lactation is over the autumn-spring period when grass growth is highest as this is the most cost effective form of feeding. As well as cows we have had 130 in-calf heifers arriving back from adjacent/contract rearing on the 20th of January, since then we’ve been training them to walk onto the rotary platform so they’re easier to load and less nervous when they calf, luckily we have a training race which we can load 5/6 into at a time and they only can go forward onto the platform opposed to trying to load them out of an open yard. After about 2-3 times on the bridge we then tubed them with sealant tubes, we done them in 2 batches with a team of 4: 2 lifting tails and 2 cleaning and tubing to keep the stress down in the yards. Each heifer was also freeze branded, vaccinated and treated with fly repellent. In Victoria every animal must have an NILS (National Livestock Identification scheme) Tag which is just a button EID tag, these also are used for the milk recording and feeding to yield in the parlour as well as other recoding systems but in the case of the heifers each tag needs to be read with the De Laval tag reader and the tag number recorded so it’s on the system.
Grass growth on the dry land is minimal although a couple of 30mm showers have kept a bit more growth than previous years so we have been grazing cows on the dry land with a fairly low stocking rate or feeding out silage as well as using the fat dry cows to graze down any rough paddocks we couldn’t pre mow to clean up the stemy grass. On the irrigation the grazing is matching the growth well so there’s no pre-mowing needed to ge
Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 3.
Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 3.
Placement: Kilpatrick Holding Trust, Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia
I’m now into my 6th month in Australia, safe to say the Christmas period was ever different to home, on 23rd November we baled some silage and hay then got the lend of two lorries to draw it home, which was probably one of my favourite days work here so far loading these in the field. Christmas day was a bit surreal as well, after morning milking and feeding out in the heat I went to Shane; our Assistant Manager’s for Christmas dinner with his family, it was so warm that once we’d the food barbequed we ate inside. After evening milking it was still 30 degrees at the farm so I headed to the beach to cool off with a swim. Since my last update the grass growth has slowed down as the ground has dried up meaning we’ve been feeding out a lot of silage particularly to the second herd on the non-irrigation ground. On irrigation ground, we are also doing a lot of pre mowing so the cows leave a nice consistent residual so we can get full feed value of the grass regrowth, as well as this we’ve also been able to bale a couple of paddocks out of the rotation which have got in front of the cows also meaning as recently as today I’ve been let drive the baler for the first time.
On the cow side of things we’re starting to dry off about half the herd with 49 last week and 150 marked to dry off this Wednesday, this should hopefully mean shorter milkings before about 100 heifers start to calve in February.
The farms three irrigation pivots are now running, I’ve attached a couple of pictures of a paddock I pre-mowed and was grazed on Friday night you can see the difference between the ground under irrigation versus the dry land really clearly, the one thing really noticeable on the dry land is how open the sward as become even with our close management in the spring to get as much tillering as possible whereas on under irrigation there’s still a nice thick sward of grass. The
Andrea Raffety: Work Placement Blog 3.
Placement: Kingsway Farm, Hastings, Ontario Canada
The weather is certainly getting colder in Canada!! We have been busy preparing all the cows for a visit from the Holstein Canada classifiers! All cows had been clipped and washed as presentation is key. In total there were 17 VG 2YR olds and numerous multiple excellents including a 94pt cow!Happy with the results we set our sights on the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto. 5 trailers of tack and animals headed to the big city in search of some good results! All went according to plan with the animals and they settled in well. However on the day, the main concensus from the crowd at the ringside was that the judge was making some 'interesting' decisions which not everyone agreed on! We didn't do as well as we had hoped but still managed to secure a 2nd, two thirds and a few others with in the top 6 and we also got premier junior breeder! Since the show we have been busy preparing for a boom on December born calves. Making sure all the dry cows are bedded very well & the calves are warm. Temperatures are plummeting to -15 as I prepare to leave for home! I have thoroughly enjoyed my experience and would recommend any student to go abroad for their placement! I'd like to thank the Greenmount Association who provided myself and Mitchell with a very generous bursary for our travels! Happy Christmas!
Mitchell Park: Blog 2: rodeo
Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 2.
video from the rodeo last weekend
Mitchell Park:Blog 2 : 2nd run of pit silage
Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 2.
That video is of the 2nd run of pit silage we made
Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 2.
Mitchell Park: Work Placement Blog 2.
Placement: Kilpatrick Holding Trust, Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia
I’ve just finished my 18th week of placement, so far the warmest day I’ve experienced was 32 degrees with it being 21 at 3:30am when I was getting the cows so not exactly the normal December I’m used to. I’m happy to report that 2 days after I wrote my last update we started silage and so far made about 1400 round bales of silage and about 450 acres in 2 clamps the first 100 acres being put in with 3 Claas tractors on Lely wagons and the second clamp with a Claas Jaguar and 2 lorries carting, so safe to say a bit different from home. The farm has all its own baling equipment with 2 mowers, a Claas 8 rotor trailed tedder, Claas 20 foot rate, Lely baler and Tanco Wrapper. Before coming here I’d virtually no experience with any of these except the tedder, but right from first cut I was shown how to set the mower and sent to the paddock but must have pleased them because since I’ve been let loose on the bigger mower which the assistant manager treats like his baby. Both mowers are disc mowers with no conditioners so are followed with the tedder although I think once things got busy they could understand why we’re so keen on conditioners at home. The Assistant manager and I have mowed all the silage for the baler and half of the clamp silage. Apart from mowing I’ve also done most the wrapping as well as my share of the raking including half the 2nd cut alongside the contractor which I enjoyed a lot. If all goes to plan next week will finish our silage season with another 100 acre clamp.
As well as silage we’ve also had a contractor in planting some summer crop rape both under the central pivots and non-irrigated ground so it should be interesting to see how they compare and hopefully I’ll get some pictures once it starts to germinate, we’re also hoping for some rain (never thought I’d be saying that in December) so we can direct drill rape into a paddock of annua
