I’ll start with a wee bit of cow stuff and then move on. As I’ve probably said before, dairy farming in New Zealand is seasonal. Meaning they calve once a year, then milk for about 300 days then have 2 months of dry time where there is no milking during the winter so the cows can prepare for the next season. Even though the winter or dry season was slow, we found plenty to do with talks for the farmers and workers, talks for the vets on continuing education, and the various ailments of cows eating kale, and fodder beat. During the winter here, because the grass doesn’t grow very much they plant ‘crop’ during the summer months usually kale, yes very similar to the plant we grow to make salads from, but a tiny bit bigger. Most off the crop that I wadded through to see a sick cow was at least to my shoulder some guys would tell me it was over their heads. Lots of dry matter for feed and the cows generally like to eat it. They eat the leaves as well as the stalk to about 2 feet off the ground and the rest gets ‘pugged’ or stomped into the ground. It’s a very low energy feed as well as moderately high in fiber, essential for the dry cow that’s not milking and just growing a baby inside. They are also given as much straw as they can eat before they go onto the kale, because the silly things will gorge on the kale, and bloat or get indigestion. Fodder beat, or sugar beet to the American’s, is a very low fiber HIGH energy feed but it to grows really well and produces a lot of crop. Its like our bulbous sugar beet except the bulb gets much bigger as they let it grow for longer, the largest I saw was 2 ft across but others farmers had described larger ones to me. The problem with this feed is that its very high in energy (sugar, hence why we make sugar from it) and not very high in fiber. The sugar in fodder beat is digested into energy too quickly by the rumen bugs and causes the cow to bloat and get acidosis, basically a drunk cow, and can lead to death. So ladies and gentleman, just proves that too much sugar is a bad thing! Its not just cavities we’re talking about!
Right, onto calving season. So July 15th marks the first official day of calving season! The herds closer to the sea calve a few weeks earlier than the herds closer to the mountains because it’s a bit warmer near the sea as we start calving technically in winter. New Zealand doesn’t hit spring and the first flush of grass till about September, but they want to synchronize the peak milk of the cows (about 60-90days after calving) with that flush of grass, so hence the reason the mild winter climate here is ideal for cows calving. Since our practice area consisted of 150,000 cows, we were on call basically for 150,000 possible problems. Well, that’s being a bit exaggerative, I was quite impressed with the Kiwi farmers and workings calving skills. They are kind of forced to be as their entire herd 500-1500 cows are calving all at one time. During the obligatory chit chat when the vet arrives on the farm I would hear the calving counts for the day, “we had 100 calves on the ground this morning,” or how many in the herd yet to calve, “Only 600 more to go…” You can’t call the vet all the time. So instead, as with all my jobs thus far, we care called when things go really really wrong. Usually the calf would be dead after the workers had been attempting to the calve the cow first, or the calf was found to be too big or in a very odd position we we’d be called out to help. Understandably, in the chaos of that many cows calving at one time, something things get missed and we’d be called out to assist with a ‘dead rotten,’ one that the calf had died and it was starting to bloat up inside the cow or she was starting to get sick from having the calf still in her.
During my first season, even with the rotation of vets being much better than I’m used to for on call, in 3 months, I did 51 calvings that counted. To keep up moral and a tiny bit of competition between us, the vets keep a calving tally. Most calvings in a 24hr period, most calvings done on a weekend on-call, and total number of calvings. I think I only won for most calvings in a 24 hr period (7), Amy won overall but I’m not sure our boss ever got around to giving her a prize for that. But for a calving to ‘count’ the cow had to be alive when you left the farm, and the whole calf had to come out. Yes, there are times when after hours of working on a cow, you are fagged out, the worker helping you has fagged out, and you’ve called for help, and you still haven’t been successful. I kept a tally of my non-successes so I had 62 total calvings but 11 were unsuccessful. Even with 8 ceasarean’s for the season I still had 11 that were deemed impossible and for humane reasons we’d euthanize the cow.
I can tell you that my overall impression was, Holy Pete, I’ve never washed my calving gear SO much in one day! I became bloody efficient at it though, and the great luxury of working with dairy cows vs beef - there is almost ALWAYS hot water in the milking shed, and if not warm there was always water present. I still carried the emergency 5L jug of water for those times where it was scarce and to make yourself presentable enough to get back in your truck it was needed.
Back into NZ culture:
On the nights we weren’t on call, and the weekends we weren’t working, we tried to use the time to completely get away from our work. Speaking of, I joined the bluegrass band called the Johnny Possum’s!! Couldn’t have been worse timing, now that the busy season was upon us, but once a week I started driving up to Christchurch to rehearse with the Possum’s in preparation for a gig at the Harbour Light Theater in Lyttleton. The band consists of our devout leader and banjo player/songwriter, Sean; mandolin player and singer, Bryz; guitar player and singer/songwriter, Keith; and bass player Johnno. Oh and me I guess, fiddle player and apparently back-up singer. So its 5 middle aged married guys and me! Most of you know that I play the fiddle, and most of you should know that singing in public or in front of anyone has been mentally forbidden. Somehow when asked if I’d sing back-up vocals, there was only a brief moment of internal panic before I calmly said, yeah sure I’ll give it a go. WHAT!?!? I could scarcely believe those words had come out of my mouth! By the next practice they asked if I’d want to sing a solo song, again after the brief moment of internal panic I found myself saying, yeah sure I’ll give it a go. !!!!!!! I had never really sang before so I decided to get a few lessons for someone to validate that I could actually carry a tune. Ironically, the lady I found was an opera singer that lived in Ashburton when not singing in Christchurch, that works on a dairy farm with her partner, that uses Vetlife for a vet, AND that farm has been assigned to ME. Figure THAT one out! It was destiny I guess. I apparently have a great range and with a little practice and some self confidence I’ll be a great singer. Never saw that one coming.
About this time, Johnno from the band, who also dabbles in Irish and folk music, told me about another session of great players in Christchurch. They meet on Tuesday nights every other week. He put me in touch with the lady that runs the e-mail notifications so the following week I showed up at the Irishman and was BLOWN away by the caliber of players and the friendly people. I was quickly inducted into the group and looked forward to many more nights of tunes with these guys. I also was re-introduced to an Irish flute player, Eilis, that I had met at the Nelson festival in June. We ended up meeting for lunch one day and headed off into little ally’s exploring Christchurch together. She had been in New Zealand for about a year but had been working in Te Anau in the hospitality industry. She had decided to stay here for a bit as the job market in Ireland was rock bottom, and found a ‘proper’ job as she called it at an engineering firm in town as a civil engineer. On weekends I had nothing planned I’d head into Christchurch and we’d get together and make supper and play some tunes. I’d teach her some and she’d teach me some, it was great!
I guess it was also about this time when I realized I had a wee mouse living in my couch. I live in a sleep-out which is a 12 x 12 room on the back of Barb and Ross’s garage with a bathroom and a little cabinet for a kitchen, and a stove out in the garage to cook on. As the winter got colder I assumed I’d have a few visitors make their way under the door into my room. That’s fine, a few bugs and a few mice, that’s life. I had been hearing something nibbling on my couch while I sat reading in the evenings but he wasn’t worrying me too much. What I did NOT count on was waking up at 4am feeling a little fuzzy animal crawling around my feet IN MY BED!!!! Ohhhh no you don’t. Amy and Alex had inherited a mouse trap with the campervan they purchased from the backpacker lot, so I borrowed that and set about trying to trap this little thing. I did have some concerns that the 1 wee mouse was going to turn into 20 more mice though through the process nature taking its course. After a week of feeding this thing heaps of cheese and watching its turds get bigger and bigger with its good diet, I had had enough. One night while reading I saw some flitting around the wall and low and behold the little mousy was on the move. Stupidly it ran into my closet where the door is flush with the carpet. I armed myself with shoes and some sandels on my hands for squashing, and locked myself in the closet. After a few rounds going around the closet, it jumping in the air and running the other way, it finally went behind the little dresser and with a little ‘clunk’ against the wall, that was the end of that mouse. Ollie and Bonnie the cats were happy to take care of that for me.
No more chewing and no more mice in the bed but a few weeks later another scurrying beast ran past my eyesight. He ran along the wall and behind my fiddle case, a swift clunk of the case just pissed him off and he lept back across the room to run under the fridge. He bit later in the evening he made an escape into the closet where he met his demise behind the dresser as well.
P.S. Because I've gotten so behind, I'm writing this during my trip to Asia and current the Bandwidth in Bali doesn't agree with uploading photos but I will add them ASAP!! Thanks for the patience guys!
