Flexible milking, soil health to feature at SMASH field day
Michael Kiernan's lucerne crop was a godsend in the dry Southland summer this season.
Macky, who spoke at a recent Small Milk and Supply Herds (SMASH) online event hosted on YouTube and Facebook, runs a YouTube and Instagram account, The Once a Day Farmer where he posts videos and photos of life on a Kiwi dairy farm to a global audience.
The Waikato farmer is based on his family’s farm near Te Awamutu. The farm, milking once-a-day, is based on 100ha of land, and milks 320 cows.
“I get a real kick out of it,” he says of his social media accounts.
“I’ve seen other dairy farmers around the world doing it, but nobody here was that into it.”
Macky has a fairly global reach, with 3463 Instagram followers from South America and the United Kingdom as well as New Zealand. His YouTube account has approximately 10,600 subscribers.
“I got into it about a year ago now, and I try and post two videos a week on YouTube to try and keep subscribers and content rolling.
“I’d seen other dairy farmers around the world doing it on YouTube and I found some of it quite interesting, but nobody was really that big into it here in New Zealand,” he says.
Macky says he thought there was a gap in the market there because “I’d say we have one of the best farming systems in the world, having all of our cows outside the whole year and limited infrastructure compared to what they have”.
“So, I thought I’d give it a go; I had nothing to lose so I bought a camera and started filming.”
He says there’s scope for other farmers to get involved in social media, but it’s difficult to get into it and with little reward.
“I’m only really just scratching the surface at the moment.”
However, Macky says the feedback he has received on his videos and posts has been great.
“They love it. I get a lot of farmers commenting on the once-a-day system.”
He says that while most of his following comes from the UK and Ireland, there are a fair few South Americans who respond to his videos with questions about things like labour issues and running a low-cost system.
“But it’s cool hearing from just so many people that like them, obviously, some people don’t and it’s very far and few between.”
He thinks his point of difference from other farmers who are popular on social media is the combination of the oncea- day milking system he uses and that he milks Jersey cows.
