Dairy farm manager

By PHILIPPA STEVENSON

Name: Daniel Lynch

Age: 25

Job title: Dairy farm manager

Working hours: Off-season - between 7am and 5.30pm. Dairy season - between 4am and 6.30pm.

Employer: Dairy farm owners Nelson and Hilary Lynch

Pay: $40,000

Qualifications needed: A couple of years' dairy farm experience; agriculture industry training courses

Career prospects: Managing a range of farms, sharemilking, farm ownership

Q. What do you do?

A. Now, in the off-season, we'll start around 7-7.30am organising staff. We'll feed out, move stock, put up temporary fences, do maintenance. If it's raining we'll stand cows off [the paddock] in the yard. We'll finish about 5-5.30pm.

In the on-season we'll start about 4am getting the cows in and milking from 5.30 to 8.30. Breakfast is till 10 so the longer you milk the shorter the break - it's an incentive to not muck around.

From 10 until 1 we'll put up fences, do stock work, feed out if necessary. Lunch is two hours from 1pm to 3pm, or if it's your turn to get in the cows, it's a bit shorter. We milk from 3.30 to 5.30 or 6.30pm.

During calving from the end of July, we're out picking up calves and getting them in, and starting to milk the cows. This will be the first year I've done that. The farm is 400ha of rolling to steep country.

We milk 700 cows in three herds in a 50-bale rotary shed. We share the milking between four of us.

Q. Why did you choose the job?

A. I did an apprenticeship as a fitter and welder. I'm a qualified tradesman but I'd had enough of the workshop. I worked at Mullan and Noy in Hamilton for five years until I was 21.

I was quite good at engineering at school and there wasn't the option to work on the farm so I looked at what I was good at. About four years ago I came back to my parents' farm after they advertised for a maintenance engineer. I maintained the machinery, fenced, did maintenance.

There was a manager who did the stock work. I started going out with the No 3 in charge of the farm, Narissa Eagle, and she's now my fiancee. When the manager left we thought we worked well together as a team and thought we'd give it a go as joint managers.

Q. What's the best part of the job?

A. You get a lot of change in what you are doing. There's a lot more to it than milking cows twice a day. It's great being outside in the open - more freedom than my old job.

I enjoy taking a lead role and Narissa and I make a good team. If there's problems we see Nelson, or if he looks out his window and wonders what's up he'll see us. He does the bookwork and pays the bills. We run the farm. I guess the worst thing is getting up early during the milking season.

Q. What are your strengths?

A. My ability to fix things, to maintain the machinery because of my engineering background. I work on the milking plant, tractors, motorbikes, implements. I need to work on pasture management and animal health. I have a general idea but nowhere near have it all in my head.

I'm doing a Level 4 production management certificate with the Agriculture ITO that will take two years. Narissa is doing a Level 3 course.

Q. What are your goals?

A. We'd like to move on to another job as a management team, to see how other other people do things, learn and experience more.

Farm ownership would be nice and we'll possibly become sharemilkers depending on what happens in the industry.

We're leasing land now to raise calves, which we'll sell on. We'll definitely stay in farming.

Q. What would you tell others?

A. Don't bother to look at farm work if you don't like being out in the weather. If you like the outdoors, it's great. It's easy to get started without being from a farming family - there are plenty of jobs and you don't have to have experience. Narissa had no dairy farming experience when she started.

It's a good feeling when I'm out on my bike in a paddock and I think back to the workshop. I've got fresh air and freedom.