counting down the days....

all the final chores to get the dairy operational are taking their own sweet time....

but this week at last ALL of the milking machinery is installed and we've had a test run (not with cows mind you!)

(here's what a brand spanking new 20-a-side swing-over dairy pit looks like - soooo pristine! look at all that stainless steel!.... oh and the blue thing you see dangling down - that's an individual pulley for the feed system....)


and the last piece of the puzzle began to slot into place this week - as I can announce the arrival of

THE HERD!

Here's the first load of BIG girls just off the truck from their looooooooooooong journey up from Victoria...

(aren't they beautiful? and you can't see in this piccie - but they are BIG, BIG girls - and just about the most beautiful Holstein-Friesians you will ever lay eyes on. This is the first load of girlies - 48 'dry' cows.. ie cows that are not presently lactating)

After MONTHS of careful negotiations we finally managed to secure a spectacular herd of glorious girls. They have all been lovingly hand-reared and tenderly milked and managed by a very special lady (Anne) in Wodonga. She has decided, like many dairy farmers currently, to leave the industry*....  but that meant selling all her special babies (and despite what many folk may think - most farmers, REAL farmers that is, care deeply about each and every animal under their protection). Understandably then, it's no small thing to sell off all your animals.....

Since just before Christmas, FP has travelled to Anne's Wodonga farm twice... and Anne even visited our place - just to be sure that her lovely girls were going to a 'good' family I suspect!.... but then we had to go through preg-testing, vet checks, Johne-status clearance (dairy herds in Victoria may be Johne's declared - our area is predominantly Johne's-free... so it is financial suicide to purchase any animal from a farm that has had a case of Johne's)..... oh and THEN, just as we were ready to bring up this first load of girlies, a couple of the milking girls contracted a virus (back to more vet checks, and more to-and-fro than you can imagine!)


it has been sooooo stressful

when at last we knew they were on the road, FP stood vigil by the yards all night (dozing a little in the ute) ready for their arrival..... they turned up at 7am, every one of them bright eyed and bushy tailed (FP was not so bright by then!)

We have another 70 girls still in Wodonga - We will be bringing them up in convoy of 2 trucks (the double truck and semi-trailer). As some of these are lactating (eg currently being milked) this next trip will be tricky. Fingers crossed we get the green light for the dairy in the next 10 days - then we can call up the cows!


and then

boy oh boy will it be busy here!





**don't get me started with how I feel about the major supermarkets and their war on farms and farming - coles and woolies are super-bastards and my disgust at coles' position on discount milk cannot be fully expressed in this arena at this time. Expect to see a WHOLE lot more about this issue pretty much everywhere you look in the next wee while.