My name is Ellen Buckley from Castlelyons, Co Cork. I am a third year Agricultural Science student at UCD. As part of my third year work placement, I decided to travel to New Zealand to complete my 16-week dairy placement milking cows.

Why New Zealand?

The main reasons New Zealand is so interesting to me, and I feel is relevant to Ireland now, are the scale of their farms, their renowned grass-based systems, and the management involved in the success of these low-cost methods. This I believe is well worth seeing and understanding first hand. Therefore we (there are 10 UCD students in the group) made our travel plans and work arrangements and left Dublin on a cold damp January evening.

After almost 28 hours of travelling we arrived in Christchurch. We spent one night in Christchurch, trying to adjust our body clocks to New Zealand time; waking up to blue skies and sunshine helped!

The first morning we organised our phones, bank accounts, etc. and then travelled south to the famous Canterbury planes. This drive was my first taste of the New Zealand’s countryside and it certainly was an eye-opener. The straight flat roads as far as the eye could see. Brown scorched land broken up by lush green irrigated farmland. Long irrigation pivots in the large paddocks, the wonderful backdrop of the Southern Alps. I soon realised this landscape wasn’t as similar to home as I expected it to be.

No big machinery sheds here

I arrived on the farm of Ben and Cate McIntosh. I was shown around and introduced to the three full-time staff, all originally from the Philippines.

The farm is located just outside Methven in mid Canterbury, over an hour’s drive from Christchurch.

The farm consists of 840 Friesian cows on a 230ha milking block, with a 134 dairy support farm. I was shown the milking parlour, or cow shed as they say here: they have a 60 Bale rotary parlour. There are 24 paddocks in total and a large calf shed to house the calves, after calving in the field in August.

The main things that struck me at first were how dry the ground is without irrigation and how basic the yard is – there are no big machinery sheds or slurry pit as would be the normal on an Irish large-scale farmyard.

Milking

The first milking starts at 5am and second milking at 2pm. The milking takes about 3 hours from start to finish, including all the washing.

I think to myself, will I be able for this? It was all a bit daunting at this stage. Having come from a tillage background, this is new territory for me.

Cate showed me my accommodation, a little on-farm house with small deck, it is very comfortable and suits me well. I was then taken into Methven to get all my milking gear.

Also, I was given use of a farm jeep until I got my own transport, this was a great help as I think I could have felt a bit isolated otherwise.

Work started on day three and it is a big learning curve. I look forward to sending an update in a few weeks’ time on my experiences.

For now, I’m really glad I’ve come to New Zealand and I am interested in learning as much as I can on my placement.

Ellen Buckley is an agricultural science student at UCD and is travelling as part of his professional work experience (PWE) programme. Ellen is a winner of the Agricultural Science Association - PWE Travel Bursary Award which is supported by the Irish Farmers Journal.

Student blog: arriving on a New Zealand dairy farm

In her first blog, UCD Agricultural Science student Ellen Buckley explains why she headed down under and how the dairy farm she works on, which has 840 Friesian cows, operates everyday.