DAIRY CHAMPION
Mad about milking By Ross Nolly
Getting off-farm can be difficult for some farmers, especially if they don’t have a team they can call on.
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mall farm owners or those working in a one-person operation can often find it difficult to get off the farm, especially as the herd needs to be fed, shifted and milked. And, a farm is a big asset to entrust to someone to look after while you’re away. More and more farmers are beginning to realise just how important it is for them to get away, even for the day, to recharge their batteries and experience some much-needed quality family time. Accounts of farmers going on holiday and wondering aloud repeatedly throughout the day, “I hope everything’s alright at home”, are commonplace. While farmers may physically leave their farm, mentally, they don’t or can’t leave it and enjoy their holiday. A reliable relief milker eases the mind and Taranaki farmers are benefiting from Stratford-based Moo Mad Relief Milking Services run by Scott and Jeanette Shaw. Over the past 19 years, they have been giving farmers the break they need and in the process have gained a reputation as reliable, knowledgeable folk for farmers to entrust their farm to.
“It’s important for a farmer to have complete trust in their relief milker.” Scott Shaw
The couple are better known as Mooman and Moolady, and when people mention Scott by name, they often receive a quizzical stare, followed by “Oh, you mean Mooman”. His iconic blue ute stands out around the district due to its signwriting and unique “4COWZ” number plate. Not to be outdone, Jeanette’s number plate is “M00MAD” and their runabout sports a “M0OMAN” number plate.
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Taranaki couple Jeanette and Scott Shaw have been operating Moo Mad Relief Milking services for 19 years, giving farmers a break when they need it.
They enjoy the cows and milking so much, they chose a cowshed as the venue when they got married. Jeanette left school to pursue a nursing career and Scott was brought up on his parents’ 80-cow Stratford dairy farm, the Stratherrick Ayrshire stud. He began milking at the tender age of seven and 50 years later is still cupping cows. “I milked morning and night vowing I’d never be a dairy farmer. I wanted to be a sheep farmer. I left school in 1982 when the sheep industry was in a downturn and no one was taking on inexperienced staff. So I joined the Federated Farmers Farmer Cadet Scheme,” Scott says. Federated Farmers initiated the cadet scheme in the 1970s. It was a threeyear course where cadets studied for trade certificates, with practical training provided by approved farmers. The scheme was a general agricultural course, but mostly focused on dairying.
He spent six months at Polytech while being billeted on an Inglewood dairy farm and attended school during the week from 9am to 3pm, as well as milking to pay for his lodgings. “I did six months at Polytech, from January to June and was then taken on for the following 12 months as a first year cadet. I hoped a sheep farm job would come up, but nothing did, so I stayed on that farm,” he says. “At the end of that season, when the first cadet was due to take over my job, I still hadn’t found a drystock job. I took a dairy job in Manaia for a year and attended Polytech monthly to do my Trade Certificate theory.” Federated Farmers usually sourced jobs for cadets and kept an eye on how they were doing. But Scott found a job that didn’t work out and only stayed there for three months before Kath Corlett, the cadet scheme’s “mother”,
DAIRY FARMER
March 2022
