Eee-Eye-Eee-I-Oh

We spent the last two weeks having a True Kiwi Experience: living and working on a dairy farm in Southland. We stayed with Helen and Michael and their two children, Ania (11) and Paul (6). Their dairy farm consists of 280 cows that are milked twice daily, as well as 80 calves that are fed twice daily, spread over their 130 ha property.

In exchange for a room of our own (complete with a fireplace and ensuite bathroom with heated flooring and a spa bath) as well as all our meals, we helped out with the cooking, kept the kitchen tidy, and watched the kids once in a while, as well as various farm jobs. Within an hour of arriving we were suited up in our coveralls and gumboots and headed out for the afternoon milking. Michael’s cowshed was built last year, so it’s all state-of-the-art (herringbone design, for people who speak Dairy). The process of milking the cows involves 36 of them lining up on each side of a three-feet-deep milking pit where we stand. Hanging above the pit are the cups that we manually attach to the teats, starting the automatic suction of milk, and that automatically detach when the milking is complete, allowing us to attach them to the cows waiting on the other side of the pit. The cows that just finished milking will file out and 36 new cows will file in, and the process repeats until all 280 cows have been milked. If all runs smoothly it takes approximately 3 hours to finish the milking and clean-up of the shed.

Keep in mind, being three feet below a large dairy cow puts you about eye-level with a not-so-pleasant/dangerous area of the cow. Dodging shit and piss (excuse our French, but this is real farming terminology) keeps you on your toes, especially since cows use these bodily functions as weapons. Another weapon in their arsenal is their powerful anti-suction-cup ninja back kick, which is known to bruise many-a forearm or hand. Sometimes, to prevent a repeat offender, their back leg would be tied to the railing to allow a smoother, injury-free milking session. Unfortunately there is no way to prevent them crapping on you as retaliation.

A job we preferred was to feed the 80 calves who lived in a separate barn, ranging in age from a day old to a couple of weeks old. These calves were split up between 5 pens depending on their age. They are fed from small milking troughs that have 5 artificial teats. This means each pen needs to be split into smaller groups of 5 – 10 during feeding. The reason for the smaller groups is that calves are naughty, and the quick drinkers will head butt their neighbours to try and steal their milk. Since they are still babies, they are fun and rambunctious. Their way of getting our attention is to head butt us in the leg, groin, bum, knees – wherever their head is aimed. The easiest way of satisfying their attention-craving-nature is to let them suck on as many of our (gloved) fingers as they can fit in their mouth. Since they only have bottom teeth, they cannot bite us or hurt us by doing this – unless they head butt our fingers into a milking trough. Watch the video below to see what we mean.










Our favourite pen was the newborns, which need to be taught how to feed. This involves straddling their neck and feeding them with a bottle until they can handle feeding independently from a trough. These little ones were the least naughty but liked to play the most. We each named our favourite calf out of the entire group: Craig’s was Ernst Ochre (tag #75) and Andrea’s was QT (tag #67). QT was Andrea’s favourite because it was very little and calm. Turns out it was so calm because it was dying. Upon arriving to a morning feed, Andrea found QT had moved on the Calf Heaven. The good news is, dead calves are worth $3, so Michael and Helen can buy two litres of petrol in QT’s memory.

Other random jobs we did were to tag (or ear-pierce) the older calves before helping load them onto a tractor to move them to a new paddock to begin their outdoor life. Andrea was in charge of loading the brass tag into the piercing tool, while Craig was in charge of catching the number Andrea loaded, holding it still by straddling its neck, and then piercing each ear. Trust us, this sounds much easier than it actually is. Riding in a pen on the back of a tractor with 15 calves on an unsealed back road surrounded by neighbouring sheep farms was truly a moment to savour and remember what an authentic experience we were having.

Overall, our farm stay has been the most interesting experience yet in New Zealand. Experiencing first-hand how hard farmers work has made us appreciate where our milk comes from, although we will not be looking into any career changes into farming! We will be keeping in touch with the family, and who knows – we may be able to reciprocate their hospitality by providing them with a Real Canadian City Experience one day!