Shelley's Diaries for Waikato Dairy Farming
For each day of the field trip, including the day spent travelling, Shelley writes a diary which is published online along with photos for the day.
Links to Shelley's diaries for this field trip will appear the day after the date listed below:
- Diary 1 - Tuesday, 25 August 2009. Join Shelley and the ambassadors as they travel to Hamilton and discover why the Waikato is so well known for its dairy farming.
- Diary 2 - Wednesday, 26 August 2009. Come and visit Morlands Farm south of Te Awamutu and discover how this herd of 430 cows is managed to maximise cow health and productivity. Find out what happens during this busy calving period and how calves are reared.
- Diary 3 - Thursday 27 August 2009. Get up early in the morning to help milk the herd of 360 cows. Find out about how the cows are milked and what can be done to maximise productivity. Discover more about farming as a business and how pasture and soils are monitored.
- Diary 4 - Friday 28 August 2009. Take a look around the DairyNZ research farm known as Scott Farm. Meet Cameron Clark and discover what trials he is currently involved in. Find out what artificial breeding is and why it is used. Learn about which milking routines are being tested. PDF documents: To view or print out PDF documents you will need the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Reader. This is available for free from the Adobe website.
