Priebennows win milk accolades
FARMING has always been a part of Oakey man Darryl Priebbenow’s life.
He learnt the “tricks of the trade” from his father, who learnt from his father before him, who settled at the Silverleigh stud in the 1930s.
“Everyone milked back then,” he said. “But you could only do 10 or 12 (cows).”
The family sold milk and cream and also kept pigs.
“We always had to help out when we were kids and it was my job to feed the pigs,” Mr Priebbenow said.
The decision was made to get rid of the pigs when Mr Priebbenow finished high school and the family went into full milk production in 1966.
Since then, Mr Priebbenow has been making his family proud and milks 180s illawarras.
“It’s a part of me now,” he said of life on the farm.
“It’s hard, constant work, but we like the lifestyle.”
And that hard work has paid off, with the stud
winning several milk quality awards.
Most recently, the Oakey couple was named as one of four Queensland dairy farms in Australia in the 2017 Milk Quality Awards, run by Dairy Australia.
Dairy farms were ranked based on the annual average bulk milk cell count across Australia’s milk processing companies.
Dairy Australia’s Kathryn Davis said the on-farm management of milk quality was key to ensuring the competitiveness of Australian dairy in the
marketplace.
“Every year the Australian Milk Quality Awards celebrate the great job being done by dairy farmers up and down the country to keep milk quality at a consistently high standard,” Ms Davis said.
Ms Davis said the awards were a unique collaboration across the industry to recognise high-achieving farmers.
Read all about it in this week’s Rural Weekly, free inside tomorrow’s edition of The Chronicle.