Happy Birthday Farm 1 Milking Parlour

Weeks are passing and not long to go. Work ticks over, fairly busy but always enjoyable.

This week 4500 cows on farm 1 (plus all the others on farm 2 and 3)  got vaccinated with Foot and Mouth, following a great schedule Anita left well set up before she went. After the work was completed  my self and the boys (the viet vets) went out to drink beer at the village near by. Great fun getting there on the back of a small motor bike with a light weight vet (about 1/2/ my weight) piloting it. Even more fun on the way back after we "drunk beer very much" as they say!!

Well, just a few days ago we had a grand party to celebrate the aniversary of the milking parlour on farm 1. The vietnamese are proud of their milking shed and look after it well sometimes so well that you wonder if cows areevry milked in it.  There is an army of workers operating the shed, and a vietnamese army-like crowd get through a lot of stuff.... Check the photos.

Also a few shots of the feeding centre, a complex you have to admire before you judge it in any way...

Yesterday the new 900 or so heifers arrived from NZ. All went well, with a well rehersed procedure from unloading at the port to transporting to the quarantine facility. Again, people everywhere, worked through the nite then all went fora deserved rest. The heifers arrived all safelyto their new grassless existence from now on till the end of their time....

Enjoy the pics and see you in a while...

Waiting for the party to roll

Not many cow sheds get cakes like it..

Assembly time ready for speaches

more people

local fruit and the usual staff you find anywhere

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Milking parlour crew. Huang, inthe blue top, centre is a milking parlour vet

Feed Centre control room. Here all the feed for the three farms are prepared. It is a pretty awesome sight and infrastructure

Arbel, the Israely deputy manager for the feed centre takes us on a tour. Here you see all the different ingridients that will be added to the TMR ration to be fed.

Mixing unit

tractors in and out to collect and feed out ration

American Lucerne

One of the many huge concrete bunkers used for silage

Local rice strawsilage. Good stuff, cattle love it.

Indoors storage for hay and lucerne

Water treatment facility

Surrounding land

Eventually this building will house a pathology lab..

Ship arriving from NZ with 900 heifers. Arrived on the 18th August

All redy to star unloading and taking them to the farm

A bit of arust bucket but it got to Vietnam...

 

Arriving at the farm. An all night operation,,,

Fresh from NZ and after 17 days at sea, the heifers looked pleased to be in firm ground but they will not see green grass again...

All heifers went straight to eat soil as if they were craving for the minerals in it..

Shed where they will spend the next few weeks

Unloading the last teruck load early in the morning after 12 hours marathon over the night

Maize drying

local cropping. It is very pretty some of the small traditional family units. Some of these farms have been operated by generaions and generations . There is pressure for them to move on and free the land to dairy...

Local agriculture blocks

Bufalo power everywhere despite the threats of progress

Good team work. The brothers arecarting irrigation piping to another block

Local wood craft made mostly from recovered tree stumps

Vietnam main highway-  Ho Chin Min Highway link north to south, i.e north of Hanoi in the North to Ho Chi Min (Saigon) in the south

Main dryin on the side of the main highway

Rice cleaning machine. Business for a local family

Small flood lake near by - feeds water to the rice terraces below

Young boy with his little sister. He was looking after the bufalo  swimming in the stream below