This is my first farm sitting job for the year. This is a small dairy farm located in Te Pahu, which is in the Waipa District of the Waikato, and not too far from Mount Pirongia. The area had a good dumping of rain around Saint Patrick’s Day so the farm is looking surprisingly green and it has pretty good grass cover. The couple who live here are equity partners and they’ve taken off down to the Queenstown area with their family for twelve days, for a break and also to attend a friend’s wedding on Easter Saturday.
I’m milking 151 cows here, twice-a-day through a 19-aside herringbone shed, which is only 8 rows. It’s a nice quiet herd. They’re all friesian apart from the occasional Jersey thrown in for a bit of colour. The shed is pretty basic but it’s tidy and it has good cow flow. It doesn’t have in-shed feeders, instead the cows get a big feed of maize and palm kernel on the feed pad for a couple hours (1pm to 3pm) before afternoon milking. They also get a couple bales of silage each day, so they’re getting well fed. The milking times are 6am and again at 3:15pm. They’re pretty quick, and within a couple hours everything is done and dusted. Feeding out takes about one and a half hours.
The house is spacious and nice and comfy, and it gets plenty of sunshine. Pet-wise, there’s a retired farm dog who goes by the name of Izzy. At 13 years of age, she’s now the family’s house dog and she prefers living the easy life inside rather than going out on the farm. She spends most of her day just sleeping. There’re also a couple of friendly tabby kitty cats, Goose and Mar-Vell.
Izzy
Mar-Vell
Goose
6 Comments
Yvonne Parr
April 26 2025 at 7:47 PMDid you get much of the recent storm in your area? Some parts of the Waikato got hit quite hard by the sounds of it.
Craig MacThòmais
April 27 2025 at 6:43 AMWe got some strong wind, though nothing too extreme. But we did get thunder storms and good downpours of rain. According to the gauge we had just over 300mm in total. What really struck me was the heat and the humidity. It felt like February when the sun came out, it was bizarre. Add that to the rain and the grass in the paddocks was bolting.
Simon Elliot
April 24 2025 at 9:25 AMWhat’s the shed like for flies?
Craig MacThòmais
April 27 2025 at 6:34 AMNot too bad in the mornings, but they can be a nuisance in the afternoons, especially with the feedpad being right next to the shed. But the shed has misters in the bails to keep the flies off the cows’ backs, and the pit hose gets plenty of use to keep things wet around the cows’ legs so milkings are pretty good overall.
Jason Mills
April 19 2025 at 12:18 PMSounds like a nice setup — Te Pahu is such a lovely area, especially with Mount Pirongia so close by! Glad to hear the cows are getting well looked after.
Craig MacThòmais
April 27 2025 at 6:44 AMYeah, Te Pahu is a nice area. I’ve always liked it around here.