Christmas at the dairy

It always amuses me when people assume the cows get a day off for Christmas. Do breast feeding mothers get Xmas off? I don’t think so.

After all when you take on the responsibility of caring for other living things whether they be animals or children it is 365 and 24/7.

No-one is complaining at Clover Hill – though Michael is not quite sure how he scored the midday shift at the home farm but then that still leaves 21 hours to celebrate.

On our farm Louise coordinates the Xmas cheer.

Louise is just one of those people everybody loves having on their team. Louise brings the festive spirit to the dairy like no other

For the babies she looks after

and this one just 4 hours old

for Sean

for Martin

There is also rumour Louise has pictures of Michael and Nick with antlers on. They are yet to surface but rest assured I am on working on it. WATCH THIS SPACE

The girls waiting to be milked think all of these hijinks are highly amusing.

Though they are a bit jealous when they find out Louise has Antlers for Eileen but not for all of them!!

But then Eileen’s face is adorable and lends itself to superb photo opps don’t you think?

Its not all play and no work. The babies still get fed and weighed to make sure we are taking just as good care of them as their mums do.

and back at the Chook pen new life has arrived for Christmas

But the girls got off the eggs before they had all hatched. So the farmers took over from nature and bought a few more into world

Which we will give back to their mums in a few days

Craig saved Christmas for our next neighbour by finding and fixing her broken water pipe

Michael said thanks Craig with a few beers.

The grain arrives and gets unloaded and Col is still trying to find out why all the parts haven’t arrived from NZ to install the new 30,000 milk vat. OMG Can you believe someone can put a vat this size on a ship and let it sail it across the ocean and left all the other bits that make it work sitting on the dock which now all have to be put on a plane and flown over. All that CO2

And what do you know?  Its dawn and its all happening again.

The girls say “Do we really have to go down that big hill this morning?

and Nick and Sean bring the springers (cows calving in the next 3 weeks) home

And next thing you know the girls are back in the dairy waiting patiently to be milked.

Sean’s on the job

Wouldn’t give it up for quits.