Lessons on milking time

MORE Tasmanian students will be able to see exactly where milk comes from thanks to the Hagley Farm School’s new dairy demonstration centre.

The centre, which was officially opened this week, will give visiting students the opportunity to see a cow being milked in a specially designed educational facility.

The centre has a milking stall, tiered seating and large screens. This will allow closeup footage of the milking to be shown as it is happening using cameras around the stall.

Other footage showing robotic dairies and other systems will also be shown.

Agricultural Education Centre of Excellence lead teacher of agriculture education Andrew Harris said the dairy centre was stage one of a program to upgrade educational facilities at the school farm.

He said a thorough review of the school farm’s previous commercial dairy operation, which had 60 cows, had deemed it too small to be financially viable.

The timing of milkings in the commercial herd also meant very few visiting students had the opportunity to see cows being milked.

Now the school farm has three cows, which will be milked throughout the year, ensuring students can see milking first- hand whenever they visit. Students will still be able to walk through the old dairy facility as part of the centre.

“It means the students will actually be able to see what happens when a cow is milked,” Mr Harris said.

The project is being supported by DairyTas and has been funded by the State Government.

Each year Hagley Farm School has about 5000 students visit from across the state.

There are also plans over the next year to develop a similar demonstration centre for its sheep and shearing operations. A cropping education centre and interactive farm technology facility are also in the pipeline.