DAIRY FARMING
Intro
Dairy farming has been a big inspiration to me ever since I was old enough to help my dad with all his jobs. I have always wanted to be a dairy farmer because I have an outdoors personality and love to be in a big environments. There are a lot of roles in the dairy farming job, like manager, assistant herd manager, 2ic (second in charge), calf rearer, owner and loads more and today I am going to explain some to you guys. Dairy farming is a job that works with things like tractor work, milking cows, working with cow and calves, organising things, driving motorbikes, maybe doing some digger work and most of all being your own person.
How to enter the job
To become a dairy farmer you don't have to go through university but if you did I would recommend Massey or Lincoln because they give you good opportunities. If you did go to university you would have to do 4-6 years of training, but you would be doing it for a good cause.
Skills
Some of the skills that you would have to have are good communication, good listening, patience, following instructions, common sense and loads more. When you start the job you don't actually have to have skills you can learns a lot of them on the way of becoming a dairy farmer. You might know this but having the right attitude helps you get more jobs and get to better places in dairy farming.
WHAT THIS JOB INVOLVES
In the dairy farming job there is a lot of other jobs like, 2ic which runs the farm when the boss is away on holiday, the manager who is the person to go to if there is something wrong and he or she is the one who sorts it all out. Calf rearer/ milker is the one who feeds the calves and milks the cow when needed, the assistant herd manager is the one who does some milking and helps out with things on the farm and last but not least the owner who makes all the decisions on the farm and what days all the staff get off.
THE PAY
The newly experienced farmers only get about 45-51k a year it if you want to be an experienced worker you would get about 63-71k a year. I don't really think that this is a lot of money because you think of all the bills that you would have to pay.
The only hard thing
The only hard thing that I could think of is getting up early in the morning to do all the milking oh and all the cow poo that you would have to deal with (well that is according to my teacher.)
What you do in each job
Being a 2ic (second in charge) is a hard job but someone has to do it. In this job you have to do tractor work, general maintenance, capital improvements and servicing of vehicles. Assistant herd manager does a lot of things like helping clean up the cowshed, thistle spraying, sorting out sick cows and sorting the feed for cows.
CONCLUSION
So that is all that i would like to say to you about farming and that you have learnt lots. I hope that in the future you all have the same amount of passion on farming as I do. Dairy farming is what I would recommend for the people that love to do outdoors stuff and love working with big animals. I would also say that it would be great experience for the people that haven’t worked on the farm before or in different environments. If you want the kind of job that gets to work your own hours, meet kind and new people, gets payed well, works with different animals and most of all loves to have fun times then dairy farming is the best job for you.
