“[The event] is covering a lot of elements farmers can take away from today and implement into their systems this afternoon and see a difference straight away,” DairyNZ project manager for Milksmart Chris Leach told Dairy News at the Morrinsville event.
“For example, looking at routines, we look at the most efficient way to milk a herringbone, for example, and go through that process. In a lot of instances we are seeing a lot of people knocking [30-60 minutes] off their milking time just by changing the order in which they cup cows,” says Leach.
“So that’s an hour a day saving; farmers can use it to do more work around the farm or get home earlier and have time with the kids, or catch fish or whatever. So it is making a real difference on farm straight away.
“We keep it simple, keep it practical. What we tend to see is farmers have learnt milking from their fathers or sort of a ‘this is how we do it here’ approach but they never get the opportunity to go off farm and see someone else milk cows. So those habits keep following on from generation to generation.
“What we are saying here is come and see how everybody else is doing it, see how you might be able to change your systems or tweak it in different ways and speed things up. We have yet to find a farmer who wants to spend more time milking cows.”
By mid-afternoon 160 people had turned up to the MilkSmart workshop more were expected at sessions going into the early evening as 190 had registered. “We tend to get the junior staff coming to the morning sessions until about 1pm then they are off milking cows, then we get the managers coming along in the afternoon for the second lot of sessions,” says Leach.
“We are really pleased with the turnout; we have run three events so far… before Christmas at Massey (Palmerston North), and just north of Whangarei; they averaged 140 which was really good.
“This is the third year we have run these; this is a four-year programme and each year it is getting bigger and bigger; it’s getting a good reputation.”
DairyNZ has six more large MilkSmart events: this week in Kihikihi and Reporoa then moving to the South Island for four more. Then it will run three more smaller events with SMASH on the West Coast.
Leach says the feedback is that farmers love them. “It’s just practical; we are not talking about big cost changes, but about putting in procedures so everyone on the farm knows what order things are done and getting away from reliance on one key person with simple, straightforward procedures so everybody knows what is expected of them and what is done in what order. It’s not rocket science, just good sound management of milking.”
