“Those two cows are mother and daughter and they always come
into the milking shed together”, noted the West Coast New Zealand dairy farmer,
amused. Row after row of cows come and go. I am amazed that he can keep track
of who’s who by looking at them. I just see four tits and a big butt ready to
poop on me as I clumsily apply the milking cups. (I'm a rookie at this).
“That one is always the first to come into the shed in the
morning. She runs in and goes straight for the feed”, said another farmer
across the majestic Wanganui Valley. It’s 5 am and no fewer than 5 shooting
stars, visible planets, the milky way galaxy, and reddish twinkling stars line
the horizon as the morning milking ritual winds up. The farmers meticulously
check each cow’s milk for signs of infection. I find it amazing that 400+ individual
cows are personally seen by a farmer at least once per day. These cows are well
looked-after with ample grazing land, extra feed in fall and winter, and a million-dollar
view of the sometimes snow-covered foothills of the Southern Alps. The
practices on these farms do not seem
to line up with the horror stories you sometimes hear about in the US. For example,
here they only use antibiotics on a cow if she is sick. If the cow is sick
enough to need antibiotics, her milk is dumped down the drain until she regains
health. I am under the impression that many dairy cows in the US are preemptively
pumped full of antibiotics and steroids all the time whether they are sick or
not.
Today, I got to “help” (OK, mostly I just watched) work the
tractor to spread bails of dried grass (saved from summer surpluses) into the paddock
as grass production is slowing for the autumn season. I looked out and saw
happy cows all around me. I learned that you can tell a cow is happy when she
sits down because it means she’s had enough to eat. However, “happy” might not
be the apropos term to describe these cows during calving season. I’ve not
witnessed this first-hand, but have learned about it during my time here WWOOFING (Work-exchange for accommodation
for travelers) in Hari Hari. Here’s what I have learned:
First of all, what makes cows lactate? The same thing that
makes human women lactate: babies! How do they get these babies? They become
pregnant via artificial insemination, which is a highly paid profession, by the
way. There are people who specialize in collecting bull semen and shoving it
shoulder-deep up cow vaginae. That is a job. Apparently, it’s a high-risk job,
too because if they do it wrong and the pregnancy does not take, the cow will be
dry (won’t produce milk) for a whole year, which translates to a loss of about $2K-$3K
NZD in revenue (extrapolated from figures provided here).
Artificial insemination specialists have practice their craft within 1-2 days of a cow going into
heat, which happens on a cycle about every ten days during the two month mating
season. Toward the end of the heat cycles, remaining non-pregnant cows have a
go with a real, live bull. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that
children who grow up on farms are fairly clued into the birds and bees from a young
age.
After 8 months of pregnancy, most cows give birth naturally,
licking their calves clean and eating their own placenta (Mmm, yummy). A
handful require assistance and by assistance I mean a farmer has to go stick his
or her hands all up in the cows business and to help yank the cow outta there.
If that fails, the cow must walk to the barn while in labor so that the calf
can be removed by force with a rope. Then, if that fails the vet (who has a
better rope) is called.
Within the first day after birth the calves are separated
from their mother. A farmer literally drives a truck around the paddock picking
up calves by hand and hauling them off in a trailer. Some mothers and babies
cry out to one another in agony as the cows follow the trailer containing their
precious cargo. The bitchier cows don’t give a flying bovine turd about their
babies being taken from them. They just continue to eating grass without an
upward glance.
At this point, you may be wondering what happens to the
babies. Most of the girl cows are kept and raised to be baby-producing milk making
cash cows (Haha, I made a funny) when they reach age two. At this stage, they
are called “heifers”, and they can be a skittish pain in the ass in the milking
shed because they don’t know where to go and they are not yet used to having
people touch their boobies twice a day for milking. And let’s just be blunt
about what happens to the boys: they are slaughtered for meat, as are cows that
are too old to have babies and produce the good stuff that makes all that yummy
cheese and butter we know and love.
Once calving is done, cows must be milked twice per day
throughout most of the year until the grass thins out (and thus milk production
slows) in the fall when farmers move to a once-per-day schedule. Cows are then “dried
off” for the coldest two months of winter. Because of this rigorous milking
schedule, dairy farming is one of the more intense types of farming one could
do. It’s not like farmers can decide to sleep in one Sunday and skip a milking;
if a cow goes a single day without being milked, she will stop producing milk
for the rest of the year, which would result in thousands of dollars of lost
revenue.
After being filtered and chilled in the milking shed, milk
is picked up by a Westland Dairy Cooperative truck every day. The Westland milk
is then processed mostly into milk powder and butter. A large portion of the
finished product is exported, especially to China.
Largely due to this recent Chinese demand, New Zealand sheep
and beef farmers have been converting their farms over to dairy, where the
dollar signs are. This was especially true in 2008 when the price of milk
solids increased by 72%.
This increase may have been due in large part to China’s domestic dairy
safety scandal which resulted in the deaths of babies and caused Chinese
consumers to demand foreign milk powder exports. In the same year, China and
New Zealand formed a timely Free
Trade Agreement which began reducing milk powder tariffs. These tariffs
will continue to taper until 2019, which will likely aid Chinese demand of New
Zealand dairy over the next five+ years. That is if NZ dairy can avoid another botulism scare. Since
2008, milk solid prices have come down from their lactic high. But having
already spurned Chinese demand, prices
have remained higher than ever (p. 49) and are stable or growing. Needless
to say, dairy farming in New Zealand is very profitable.
Next time you see a herd of 500 cows sitting on the side of
the road somewhere, consider that they will probably generate about $10MM NZD
in lifetime revenue for someone. Of course as more farms are converted to
dairy, oversupply will eventually cause a price drop, but hopefully for the
folks in Hari Hari, Chinese milk consumption growth will outpace Kiwi sheep
farm conversion.
More images from around Hari Hari:
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