Dairy Farms

At first cows were milked by hand and the cream skimmed from the cooled milk in setting pans. The milking machine and the cream separator, both powered by a petrol engine, reduced manual labour and made possible bigger herds on farms. Butter and cheesemaking were done in cooperative dairy factories. Rural electrification in the 1930s enabled electric motors and electric water heaters to be used in the cowshed. The herringbone and other new pattern cowsheds with a lower level for the shed hands now make it possible (using non-stripping techniques) for two men to milk over 100 cows.

Tractors and Harvest Machinery

The steel-wheeled tractor replaced the horse in heavy farm work in the 1920s. In the late 1930s the small rubber-tyred tractor appeared on dairy farms. The horse was finally replaced after the Second World War by the small three-point-linkage farm tractor, a versatile machine with a wide range of mounted equipment. In the 1920s the hay harvest already used horse-drawn mowers, rakes, and hay sweeps. Loose hay was stacked with hay grabs and stackers operated by horses. There were comparatively few hay sheds. In the 1930s tractors were used to mow, rake, and sweep hay, and stationary hay balers were introduced. Mobile hay balers, drawn and powered from rubber-tyred farm tractors, were in service before the Second World War, mainly by contractors. After the war this machinery was more used and, when smaller units were introduced, became as common as the hay sheds which are now used to store baled hay in.

Preparation of Silage

Silage, previously a heavy laborious crop to stack, became easy to handle in the 1940s and 1950s with the introduction of the English buckrake. Silage making became popular, especially in the wetter districts where haymaking is difficult. Terms like “wedges”, “clamps”, “buns”, and “saucers” became commonplace.

More recently the forage harvester has been used widely for silage making and concrete bunkers (often of “tilt up” construction) are now being built. Vacuum packing, wherein silage is conserved between two polythene sheets, was used widely in the South Auckland area in 1963.