A Dairy Farmer's Day

5:20am

Getting the cows ready for milking and cleaning their cubicles.

5:30-7:00am

Milking the cows, scraping yards and re-bedding the cows’ sleeping area.

7:00am

Washing down the milking parlour, feeding calves, feeding breeding cows and monitoring/treating cows who have just calved.

8:00am

Mixing high-quality forage rations in a mixing wagon. Making sure young stock are cleaned and given fresh bedding, feed and water.

9:00am

Breakfast!

10:00am

Checking all the young stock out at grass and moving them to new fields on a regular basis. Fencing fields and changing/refilling water tanks.

12:30pm

Lunch

1:30pm

Livestock management, maintaining farm building and machinery and completing computer inputs.

3:15pm

Milking the cows for the second time, scraping yards.

5:00pm

Cleaning the parlour and feeding calves again.

6:00pm

Dinner

8:00pm

Proving evening feed, walking through the herd to make sure all are in good health, turning cattle shed lights off. Setting up for the morning’s milking.

That is just the day-to-day routine work! Jersey Dairy farmers do lots of other jobs too, including:

Countryside Management:

Trimming field hedgerows twice a year (Jersey branchage); this can take up to 200 hours! In winter months, checking for and clearing fallen trees.

Field cultivations and planting:

Preparing seed beds (ploughing, tilling, rotavating, harrowing, sub-soiling), growing main crop feeds such as grass, maize and wheat, and fertilising and weeding crop fields to ensure a successful crop.

Manure Spreading:

Collecting manure to make organic fertiliser.

Paperwork:

Recording of field applications, animal movements, feed purchases, animal registrations, paperwork for the farm hygiene and animal welfare assurance schemes Red Tractor and ‘LEAF (Linking Environment And Farming’).