Attention cattle! Three months on a dairy farm

Hello!

It has been 111 days since we posted our last blog entry. Over three months, Vroni and I have been working to replenish our travel fund. As you know, the daily work routine is not so exciting to write about every few weeks. Nevertheless, I don't want to miss the opportunity to share my experiences on an Australian dairy farm with you. While Vroni lives and works in beautiful Perth, I moved to Capel, which is over 200 km south, to work on a dairy farm there. First of all, the dimensions are 'slightly' different from what we are used to on farms at home. I was aware that I would definitely not encounter this type of agriculture in Australia - everything is a bit bigger here than in Germany.

When I started in mid-July, I was met with 2,500 cattle: dairy cows, calves, heifers, and mother cows. 900 dairy cows are milked twice a day - around 22,000 liters of milk are produced on this farm alone every day. However, milking was not my job - I worked with two colleagues in the calf team. Our task was to take care of the 264 calves. Each newborn calf was first taken to the 'dome' (a portable cattle dome), where it stays for about ten days before moving to the outdoor enclosure with calves of the same age. Newborns are first hand-fed colostrum until they are then accustomed to nipple buckets. All calves are fed twice a day. We thus prepared 900 liters of milk every day for calf feeding. During the peak season, working 13 to 14 hours a day was the norm. With the motto 'Sleep, eat, shit, repeat', I completed up to 86 hours of work per week. At this point, I would like to apologize to all my friends who are still waiting for a response. To be honest, the motto matched the daily routine - except for eating, showering, and sleeping, I didn't do anything else between workdays. Despite the circumstances, I really enjoyed working on the farm! I spent 90% of my day outdoors - which was accompanied by a lot of rain showers in the Australian winter months. And even though I occasionally thought of my comfortable, dry office chair that I traded for this adventure, I would not want to trade it at all. It was a wonderful time! The only thing I probably won't miss is the smell of my work clothes. ;-)