Dairy Australia, Mr. Ian Halliday, 60 City Road, Southbank VIC Dear Mr. Ian Halliday,

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1 Dairy Australia, Mr. Ian Halliday, 60 City Road, Southbank VIC 3006 Dear Mr. Ian Halliday, We cannot thank you enough for allowing us COWLINGWOOD for taking part in the 2014 Cows Create Carers Program. The program has been a great learning experience for us to learn some of what the dairy industry has to offer, as before entering this program we had very little knowledge of the dairy industry. Our group is made of up of Lachie, Ryan, Sam, Mika and Sarah, with only having Lachie living on a cattle farm and the rest of us either living on a stock farm or a being a city kid. This meant that our group had very little knowledge to do with the dairy industry outside of the real basics. Before the Cows Create Program, we never understood how much time and effort went into getting and producing milk from a cow. We cannot thankyou enough for all the information and learning experiences we have gained in such a short amount of time from this program. We loved every second of the three weeks that we had with Troy and it was very hard saying goodbye to him on his last day with us here at Ballarat Grammar. RYAN. SARAH. LACHIE. MIKA. SAM. TROY. Our group name is called Cowlingwood, we chose this because as our theme was Collingwood, we wanted to try and combine our theme with what we were working with cows. So this is how we chose our group name.

2 Our group spent a total of 19 days with Troy, and during this time our main aim was to try and get Troy to gain weight at a health rate and in a clean and healthy environment. During Troy s stay with us, we had to plan a feeding timetable making sure we always had someone there to feed him each morning and night. We noticed as a group how dramatically Troy s attitude and behaviour changed between the time we got him and the time that we had to say goodbye, at the end of the tree weeks troy was a very strong, playful and very energetic young calf. GROUP PREDICTIONS: SARAH: I have never really had any experience with dairy cows as I have grown up on a sheep and cropping farm, I have hand feed at beef calf at a friend s house but other than that I haven t really had much experiences to do with dairy cows. I m hoping that our calf doesn t get sick and puts on a lot of healthy weight. SAM: I have fed calves before so I expect to be feeding it like we usually feed them. I hope that over the three weeks of the calf being with us, it grows big and strong. MIKA: As I am a South African here on exchange at Ballarat Grammar I have not had very much experience with dairy cattle, other than when I was 13 and I went to a dairy farm on a school excursion and they had to milk all of the cows by hand, so I think that everything here in Australia is going to be an a lot different experience for me, I am looking forward to looking after the calf for 3 weeks. RYAN: I haven t had much experience with dairy cows; I have fed them before though. I expect our calf to grow as the 3 weeks come to end. LACHIE: I have never had experience with dairy cattle. I am looking forward to looking after them for three weeks feeding them and I hope that it will grow after three weeks so it will be nice and strong when it get back to the dairy farm so that he will not get any diseases from any other cattle or from the milk. When we were given the 6 calves to choose from, we chose Troy, for his happy personality, cheeky manners when it comes to feeding time and his generally healthy appearance. As a group we were not quite sure how to pick the differences between a healthy calf and one that is sick, other than the generally common characteristics that we had previously learnt.

3 Feeding Troy every single day at 8:30am before school and 3:30pm after school, was surprisingly relative easy for our group, we were always able to have a group member there to feed Troy. We were able to carry out this process for the duration of the three weeks. Each morning before school at 8:30am and afterschool at 3:30pm we would unlock the agriculture room and all of the materials needed for the process of making up the cow s milk, were stored away in a very dry and clean area. Before we started this process we would always disinfect our hands. We would add 1.5L of calf care premium milk powder supplied by Murry Golbourne into the empty bucket and then add 10.5L of warm water; we would then stir the mixture to make sure that it was a smooth consistency, making sure there were no possible lumps of power that the calves could possibly swallow. We then poured this mixture into 6 individual bottles provided by Landmark. After finishing the process of making up the mixture one person from each group would go into the pen and hand feed the calves. This was always a god time to monitor Troy s general health, making sure that he was always dinking well. In our case this was never a problem, Troy always loved his food. We were always able to make sure of this using the measuring tapes provided by Shoof International. After Troy had finished he could then go and nibble on some Calf Starter Meal provided by Reid Stockfields. Troy along with the 5 other calves that Ballarat Grammar were lucky enough to have for the three weeks, was kept in a pen provided with a roof, clean water that was changed every day to ensure it was always fresh. The pen was sheltered from wind and rain and we always ensured that there were never any sharp objects laying around that the calves could possibly swallow or suck on. PHOTO S OF FEEDING** As our group was lucky enough to get Troy we did not have any complications at all during the 3 week process of Troy s stay with us. After day 3 of Troy with us Troy was rapidly putting on weight every single day. Troy was always a very quick drinker, always being either the first or second calf finished, this meant that we always had to think of new ways to occupy Troy while the other calves were still finishing there milk.

4 During Troy s stay with us here at Ballarat Grammar he put on a total of 17 kg, which for all the groups at Grammar was around an average weight. The graph above shows Troy s growth in weight for the 3 weeks that we had him. We measured Troy every 4 days using the weight tapes that were provided by Shoof International. We always had the same person measuring Troy so that we knew it was always done accurately and in the same place. In our case this was Sarah. With Troy s excellent weight increase it proves that he was always healthy. After his first few days of getting settled at Grammar while he was still spooked and getting used to the new environment he was going to be living in for the next 3 weeks he was absolutely fine. Troy was always very energetic, always standing by the gate mooing for us to get there faster with his food. He was always very keen to get out for a run with a halter on outside of the Heinz Centre. We slowly introduced Troy to the idea of eating grass, not wanting him to consume too much too soon.

5 On our finial day with Troy we took him back to Linn s farm, were she then took us on a tour around her old dairy. Linn no longer does any milking on the farm anymore this farm was purely for breeding. But Linn still had her old dairy there, so we were able to see how that worked. This was such a great experience for us to have, being able to see how dairy calves are brought up and how the old dairy s used to work. One day during class we researched all the different types of jobs that you could do within the dairy industry. Before our dairy tour and research we thought there was only about 4 or 5 different jobs in the dairy, but this has really opened our eyes to the amount of different opportunities in the dairy industry. Microbiologist Hygiene Manager Nutritionist Stock and Station Agent Breeding Specialist Genetics Technician Agronomist Agricultural Consultant Artificial Inseminator Cheese maker Dairy Farmhand Milking Mechanic Herd Manager Lab Technician Marketing Manager We cannot thank you enough for allowing us to take part in the 2013 Cows Create Careers. It has been such a great experience for all of us all. We have learnt so much to do with the dairy industry. This project has opened our eyes to so many more things not only within the dairy industry but as a whole the farming industry as well. We believe that this project is such a great experience that everyone so get involved in, we have gained so many great positives from this. We have loved every single second of it and looking back now the only thing we wish we could do differently would be spend more time with Troy, to watch him grow even more. Thank you for providing us with such a great experience. Your sincerely, Ryan Green, Sarah Walker, Sam Olson, Lachie Walsh & Mika Schoeman (Cowlingwood)