Farm Manager Report

What’s been happening on farm

With such an unusual time for the world during the past few months the training and delivery of agricultural courses have been considerably disrupted. This has meant students and staff have had to catch up on a lot of course delivery and assessments, which we are pleased to say has been quite successful. There is still a lot of work to be done though, let’s hope that a worldwide pandemic does not happen too often and life and training can get back to normal.

Life on the farm still has to go on, livestock are still required to be milked and fed, beef cattle and sheep were all giving birth and the fodder crops still had to be planted. Farm staff worked through these times, practicing social distancing as best as possible and completing the required operations. 

New Cattle Yards

As the restrictions began to ease and students began attending courses, the biggest project for the farm was to build the new cattle yards. The yards are positioned on the elevated area on the eastern side of the Mt Barker Road near the hay shed. 

Firstly, gravel was carted into the area and leveled. The yards were then marked out, pegged and drilled. The area where the yards are positioned is topsoil over rock and every hole needed to penetrate 400 millimetres of rock which took a great deal of time. The yard panels were then placed into the holes and joined together using strong brackets. This seemed relatively simple, however when the holes and the panels did not quite line up a huge amount of extra jack hammering was needed. Students and staff did an outstanding job cutting through metres of rock and dirt until all the aligning sections of the yards were joined together. All the gates were hung with hinges.

Once satisfied with the panel position and alignment,  students and staff poured approximately six tonnes of concrete and filled in the holes holding in all the panel legs. Rocks were used to provide extra filling to what were large deep holes. Students then finished the concrete using troweling tools to leave smooth and circular mounded footings.

As Denmark has received a lot of rain in the past week work has been delayed finishing the project this week. The next step is to erect the roof frame and attach the purlins to the frame. The roof will extend the full length of the race and crush area and be four metres wide. Trim deck roof sheeting is then attached to the purlins. A loading ramp and custom made panels can then be fitted to the end of the handling race. Additional concrete will then be laid throughout the race and forcing yard.

I must acknowledge the yards were funded by the Agricultural Education Trust last year and this has made this important facility available to us. I would like to congratulate all students who were involved in the preparation and construction of the facility and hope they enjoyed building something that will be used on the farm for many years to come.