Fonterra Dairy Farmer
I’m Kaylene Aubrey and I’m a 4th generation dairy farmer. My husband Bill and I have a dairy farm near Matamata. We have two little ones, Joshua who’s nearly 3 and Asha who is 18 months.
We’re passionate Fonterra farmers and understand that the quality of our milk products starts here with us. This is why I get up at quarter to 5 every morning, put my gumboots on, get the cows in and go to the shed. It’s a challenge but a good challenge.
Farming is a livelihood and I do this because it is the excitement of seeing something through from start to finish and being able to feel, touch and be in control of every single process. We take great pride in feeding our cows properly, making sure that the milk that they’re producing is of high quality and that we look after that whole life cycle on the farm.
Safety for me as a parent is important and that crosses over to being a farmer as well. It’s a real sense of pride for me to produce the quality of the milk that we do, and know that it’s going to benefit all sorts of people, but particularly little ones just like my two.
Once you have kids you definitely empathise with the cows a bit more! When they’re calving, definitely. I do think when they first calve and I’m in the shed with them, and they’re swollen and they’re grouchy and they’re tired, you just think, oh you poor thing, you do. You take a little more care with their udders and attention with them. Guys just can’t empathise in the same way. They don’t know what it’s like.
As a farmer, seeing that we are able to trace a product through our chain of care is an amazing thing. It is important for us that the consumer can pick up the can in the supermarket, can scan the QR code, they know it is a legitimate product, they can trace it back to the factory where it was processed and they can see the milk pool it comes from, which is our farm is a part of!
That’s the beauty of the traceability technology we have. We’re really proud to see that and to be contributing to that.
