How Changed Thinking Cut Spring Stress
By Robyn Pearce
(611 words)
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to keep on doing things in a certain way ‘because that’s the way we do it round here’?
I was chatting to Adrian Van Bysterveldt from Dexcel a while back at a Dairy3 conference in Rotorua. When he mentioned Lincoln research regarding once a day (OAD) calf-rearing studies, and the attendant staff efficiencies without any significant impact on the calves, I pricked up my ears.
‘If you think that’s interesting,’ he said, ‘come and meet Louis Kuriger. For large parts of the season he only milks once a day.’
Louis and his family farm near New Plymouth and it turns out he’s been practicing elements of OAD milking for a few years. As he filled me in on how they’ve trailed the process, my jaw dropped. I couldn’t wait to share his comments with my workshop participants the next day.
Louis’s key points:
During the spring, when feed is still tight, it’s a brilliant process. Most years, once the spring flush comes, they’ve so far gone back to twice a day until later in the summer. However, they’re still experimenting with the best formula for them.
Some of the advantages:
- Everyone’s in at a reasonable hour at night.
- Staff are fresh instead of exhausted.
- Everyone ‘has a life’ – in the summer they can go to the beach with everyone else if they’re doing OAD at that time
- It’s easier to keep good staff because their working conditions are so much better
- It puts far less stress on the animals.
- The cows love it – according to Louis their body language is amazing.
- There are big cost savings through not putting the cows through the shed twice a day – in both staff and plant
- The production is barely impacted at all.
Another simple variation that others talked about enthusiastically is to milk the colostrum mob once a day, even if the full-blown OAD system isn’t adopted across the herd.
These innovations werean eye-opener to me, coming from a dairy farming childhood with vivid memories of wet cold spring nights in the shed, recalcitrant calves,..... (and you know the rest!)
You might not be a dairy farmer, but don’t think this story applies just to that sector. We all get benefit from constantly looking at the way we do things, to see what we can simplify, eliminate, refine, or change. What idea can we tip on its head? How can we reverse our thinking? There might be a very simple clever way of doing things that we’ve never thought of – just waiting to be uncovered.
I had an example of that at breakfast one morning. One of the guys at my table at the Asian Professional Speakers – Singapore makes about 60% of his income from website sales. He’s got 700 websites, many of them quite small. We were very curious as to what he sells on them.
‘Are they one-page sales letter sites?’ I asked. (That’s not an uncommon strategy in the web marketing world.)
‘No’, said Colin. ‘They’re deliberately constructed to be so boring that the person looking at them will click on the ad for someone else’s product, embedded somewhere on my site. When they click through to this other company’s site some of those visitors buy the product advertised – and I’m an affiliate of that company.
‘I don’t have to do anything as regards creating or producing the product. I don’t have to store, pack or ship. I just get a cheque every month – for being a conduit. It’s quite ethical – just back-to-front thinking!’
Off now to go and push my jaw shut!
Robyn Pearce CSP (Certified Speaking Professional) is the Time Queen. She mastered her own time challenges and now helps people around the world overcome theirs. She can show you how to transform your time challenges into high productivity and the life balance you desire.
Download her free report “How to Master Time In Only 90 Seconds”, a simple yet powerful diagnostic tool to help you identify your key areas for action. You’ll find it at http://www.gettingagrip.com/products/e-books/index.asp And while you’re there, enrol for your free Top Time Tips – practical advice every two weeks
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