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“I’m pretty proud of my cows. From the time we bought our first 30 cows and all these years of breeding and culling, it’s good to see them milking well now and to have the potential to do more,” says Carlos.
High standards in a sensitive environment Careful management of hygiene, effluent, water and stock are keys to success for a sharemilking couple, as Elaine Fisher explains. Photos by Alan Gibson.
T
he dairy is a food factory and, as such, hygiene should be of the highest standards, according to Rerewhakaaitu dairy farmers Carlos and Bernice Delos Santos. “I tell our staff that you should be able to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner off the concrete floor in the dairy and not feel disgusted about it,” says Carlos – and he’s not joking. The couple’s commitment to cleanliness 24
and hygiene has seen them win major regional and national awards. In 2017 when they won the Central Plateau Share Farmer of the year award and went on to be runners-up in the New Zealand Share Farmer of the Year, Bernice and Carlos took the Ecolab Farm Dairy Hygiene merit awards in both. It was the Delos Santos’ high standards that so impressed the judges in the awards, with Share Farmer head judge Neil Gray
saying in 2017: "We walked into their cowshed and couldn't believe it was over 30 years old, it looked fantastic. They lived and breathed their philosophy that the cowshed was the place where they produce the finest quality milk that goes onto supply food for the rest of the world". Today the same detailed procedures the couple applied to that dairy, to ensure it operated safely and to the highest hygiene standards, are followed in the 54-bail
Dairy Exporter | www.nzfarmlife.co.nz | August 2020
