Draft na sample. Only the start screen and paddock 1 are in Tagalog so far. Farm words (break, reel, waratah, paddock, gate, trough) are left in English on purpose. The wording has not been checked by a native speaker yet.
Welcome back. Picked up where you left off.
Can you size a break by eye?
A free game for dairy farmers. Set breaks, budget feed and keep the cows fed across real paddocks. Made by a herd manager.
Who's playing?
Tap one to start. No names, it just shows me who the game is reaching.
What the words mean
DM (dry matter)
What's left of feed once all the water is taken out. Cows are fed on DM, because the water has no feed value. Fresh grass is only about 15 to 20% DM.
kg DM
Kilograms of dry matter. A milking cow eats about 17 to 18 kg DM a day.
Cover (kg DM/ha)
How much grass is in a paddock, measured as kg of dry matter per hectare. Measured with a plate meter or judged by eye.
Residual
The grass left behind after grazing. Leave about 1,500 kg DM/ha so it grows back fast. Graze lower and regrowth slows. Leave more and grass gets wasted and goes stalky.
Available feed
Cover minus residual: the grass the cows can actually eat. A 2,900 cover grazed to 1,500 gives 1,400 kg DM/ha to eat.
Break
The part of a paddock the cows are given for one grazing, fenced off with a temporary tape.
Reel and waratah
A reel holds the electric tape. Waratahs are the steel standards you run it between.
Back-grazing
Leaving the last break open so cows can go back and tidy up what they left.
Fence posts
The squares along every fence line are posts, 10 m apart. Count them to pace out a break: on a 200 m fence, a third is about 67 m, so a bit under 7 posts. Every farm's spacing is different, so learn your own.
Hectare (ha)
10,000 m², about the size of a rugby field with its in-goal areas. 0.5 ha is half that.
Supplement
Feed brought in to top up grass: silage, hay, PKE or meal.
Silage
Grass or maize cut and stored wet, sealed so it ferments and keeps. Heavy because it's mostly water: often only 30 to 40% DM.
PKE (palm kernel)
A dry, bought-in feed made from palm kernels. About 90% DM, fed on a pad or in the shed.
Wastage
Feed the cows trample, soil or leave. Much higher when fed out in a wet paddock than on a feed pad.
Feed gap
How much more the cows need than the grass can give them.
Break by area
Home paddock
Paddock
Which gate will you bring them in through?
Read the map first: water, ground and where you'd check them.
Weather
Rain's set in. The ground's going soft and the cows want to bunch at the gate. How will they graze this break?
Paler grass, less feed. Darker, more feed.
Tap twice to put in two waratahs. Drag them to move the reel. The break is the side with the gate.
Supplements in the shed
Where will you feed it out?
Your reelWhere the reel should go
Rule from the paddock
What to look for
Tail paint
A strip of paint on the tail head. It only rubs off when other cows ride her and she stands for it.
Rubbed bare
Paint gone and the hair roughed up. She has stood to be ridden.
Half rubbed
A maybe. Look for a second sign before you put her up.
Heat patch
A stick-on patch in front of the paint. Grey means untouched. Bright pink means it has been triggered.
Feel the rub
Run your hand over the tail head. A fresh rub feels warm. Warm and rough means she was ridden today.
Blistering and bleeding
Skin rubbed raw, blistered or bleeding on the tail head. She has been ridden hard.
Pin bones
Check the two pin bones either side of her tail. Hair rubbed off there is another sign she stood.
Mud on the flanks
Hoof marks down both sides from being ridden.
Standing to be ridden
In the paddock, the cow underneath that stands still is the one on heat. The cow doing the riding might be, or might just be joining in.
Red and green paint
Red is a cow not yet mated. Green goes on after she has been put up for AB.
AB
Artificial breeding. You draft the cows on heat so the technician can inseminate them.
That was a taste of dairy farming. Farm assistant, 2IC and herd manager are real jobs, and people work up that ladder on what they can do. If you liked this, ask your careers adviser about Gateway. It can put you on a farm one day a week while you're still at school. Play the full game
Would you use this to test or train staff?One tap. No names.
Using this to hire or train staff? I can build a test from your own paddocks and send it to your applicants. Get in touch: