Day 10 - Oamaru

We departed our hotel in Twizel of the South Island around 8:30 am this morning. We drove and enjoyed the mountainous scenery for a while and then stopped for breakfast in Omarama. It was a neat little town that was full of antique shops and souvenir stores. Some students purchased coffee and pastries from the café. We seem to notice that meat pies are a speciality in New Zealand.  Some students even decided to have some ice cream for breakfast since we knew it would be one of our last chances to try the Hokey Pokey ice cream, famous to New Zealand (a toffee ice cream). We then got back on to the road and headed towards Oamaru.

Along the way to Oamaru we passed the Waitiki Dam, which is the first power station on the Waitiki River. The Waitiki plains changed from sheep to dairy production in recent years. We then went on our way to Oamaru. Oamaru is the largest town in North Otago and is home to some of New Zealand’s best 19^th century architecture, including a Victorian Precinct. Oamaru is a town that still reenacts its heritage through numerous festivities where the townspeople are seen dressed in garments from the 1800’s. The town is split into the South and North sides. We were able to see numerous buildings that were built in the 1800’s and that are still being used and preserved. The buildings were made of local stone found in Oamaru. This town is especially interesting because it is known as the steam punk capitol of the world. Throughout the town we were able to observe the numerous pieces of welding artwork that is composed of scrap metal. A lot of the students grabbed lunch at local cafes and restaurants, trying to consume as much local food as possible before our departure tomorrow. Some shops that were found in the town included a Saddle Shop and numerous souvenir shops. Students were also able to walk to the harbor on the Pacific Ocean and enjoy the view.

Building from the 1800’s in Oamaru

Train artwork in Oamaru

We then headed to visit Ard and Wilma Van Leeuwen’s dairy enterprise, which contains over 24 milking robots. The enterprise consists of twelve dairy farms which are owned by the couple, but have a ranging variety of management. Some are managed by contract milkers, 50/50 sharemilkers, and family members. Overall, the enterprise consists of 12,000 head of Holstein, Jersey, and Kiwi cattle on over 7,000 hectares. Some of the dairies are pasture based with the New Zealand normal setup of milking cows in a rotary milking shed. However, they have chosen to experiment with conventional ways of dairy farming by housing milking cows on the farms in barns.  Three of these twelve farms are adopting new technological techniques by milking with robots. Each robot is able to milk up to 60 head of cattle. They recently put up a barn that holds 1,500 head of cattle and 24 milking robots. They have both Lely and DeLaval milking robots. They believe the robots to be extremely beneficial and efficient to their business because the robots are able to help them in more ways than just increasing production. The robots are able to measure things such as milk production, milk content, somatic cell counts, weight of the cow, and helps with heat detection. Additionally, they have seen their cows produce 2.5 times better than when they were not housed in barns. Using this system, they are able to milk year round, rather than when they could not while being pasture based. Each cow wears a pedometer around her neck to track how many times she has been to the robot. If the cow has been to the robot an adequate number of times to be milked in a day, the robot will be able to look this up and send her away to prevent over milking. The robot attaches the milking machine to the cow using lasers. If there is an issue attaching the milkers, the robot will try seven times and then send the cow on her way. It takes around 6.5 minutes for milk prep and for the cow to be milked.

Kiwi in front of the milking robot

Milking robots in the barn home to 1,500 cows

               The Van Leeuwens grow their own feed for their animals. They feed their animal’s maize (corn), lucerne (alfalfa), soy, grass, and more. Additionally, they have a very efficient waste management system that includes scraping lanes, transporting the waste to lagoons, and using the waste as fertilizer in fields. The Van Leeuwens run a very efficient enterprise and are not afraid to try new technologies and do whatever possible to keep their cows comfortable. Some additional techniques they practice include placing rubber mats in each stall of the barn, as well as having an automatic feed pusher to push excess feed to cows at certain times of the day.

Automatic feed pusher

We headed towards Ashburton to enjoy our last night in New Zealand. The feel of the students seems to be quite mutual; it’s a bittersweet feeling of being sad to leave such a beautiful country where we have learned so much and made friends and memories that will last a lifetime. However, we are all very excited to share with our friends and family at home what we learned, and how this trip will help us in our future endeavors. Thank you for keeping up with our trip, and we can’t wait to see you all soon!