Dairy Laneways, Effluent and Feed Pads: Compact Machine Work on a Tasmanian Dairy
The jobs a skid steer and a small excavator do between milkings on the North West Coast and in the Meander Valley, and the attachments that make them quick.
A Tasmanian dairy has a tractor for the paddocks and a loader for the silage. What it often lacks is a compact machine for the hundred jobs around the shed, the laneways and the drains that the big gear is too clumsy for.
Laneways
Cows walk the same laneway twice a day, and in a Tasmanian winter it turns to a wallow that costs hooves and milk. Laneway repair is a skid steer job: strip the mud with a 4-in-1 bucket, crown the base with a dozer blade so water sheds, spread and level gravel, and cut a drain along the low side with the excavator. An RS10 with a 4-in-1 bucket and blade rebuilds a hundred metres of laneway in a day.
Effluent
Effluent ponds, drains and sumps are regulated and must be built to spec. The digging is excavator work: the R22 PRO for drains, sumps and small ponds, the R57 PRO for pond construction and desilting from the bank. Keep the machine on firm ground; effluent pond banks are soft.
Feed pads and stand-off areas
A feed pad is a compacted, drained platform where cows eat without turning the paddock to mud. Strip the topsoil, shape the falls with a tilt bucket, compact the base, spread the gravel or rubber. The excavator does the shaping; the skid steer does the spreading and the daily scrape-out afterwards.
Water
Poly to troughs across the farm, trough pads, tank sites and pump pits. A trencher on the skid steer cuts long runs in red soil quickly; the excavator handles the gullies, gateways and rock.
Shed work
Sweeping the yard, pushing silage, moving pallets of minerals, cleaning calf pens. An RS06 or RS10 with a bucket, forks and a sweeper lives at the shed.
Attachments that pay on a dairy
4-in-1 bucket, dozer blade, tilt bucket, trencher, pallet forks and a sweeper. Use the attachment finder to see which fit the RS06/RS07 and RS10/RS20.
Machines
The RS10 skid steer and R22 PRO excavator are the dairy pair; larger farms add the R57 PRO for ponds and earthworks. Put your hours into the running cost estimator and compare against the contractor's day rate.