Summary Page: Canterbury Dairy Farming
Term 1 starting 6 April 2011.

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Spend three days on Lincoln dairy farms. Meet a farm manager and his staff and help with the morning and afternoon milking on two different farms. Investigate pasture types to see how they use nitrogen and water. Record data in the dairy shed as a cow is weighed and information from a cow's activity collar is downloaded for software analysis. Use lysimeters to explore environmental impacts. Check the health of a cow through condition scoring and find out how a herd is kept healthy. See how the future of a herd is carefully managed through artificial breeding. Find out the latest trends in dairy farming and work with world class research scientists as they work towards enhancing the productivity and sustainability of dairying in New Zealand.

Where you will go

The Canterbury Plains is on the east coast of the South Island. These plains are New Zealand's largest area of flat land. With the development of large scale irrigation many mixed crop and livestock farms and extensive sheep farms have been converted into intensive dairy farms. Canterbury is one of the country's most productive dairy farming regions. Scientists at Lincoln University are working with DairyNZ to improve our dairy industry to ensure that New Zealand maintains its competitive edge within the global market. Lincoln has a demonstration farm and a research farm. The demonstration farm is a larger, commercial farm with a rotary dairy shed, while the research farm has a small herd and a herringbone dairy shed. The purpose of these farms is to trial new practices and complete research which, if successful, can be used by dairy farmers throughout the country

Learning Areas/Levels

Science: Agricultural and Horticultural Science Levels 6-8, Planet Earth and Beyond Levels 2-4, Living World Levels 2-4; Social Sciences: Geography Level 6, Social Studies Levels 2-5

More Curriculum

Achievement Standard Geography 91009: Demonstrate geographic understanding of the sustainable use of an environment. Resource reference: Geography 1.3B. Resource title: Will it Last? Credits: 3.

• Vision, Values, Key Competencies, Principles, Literacy and Numeracy

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• ESOL

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