Peter Gallien took the hands-on approach to building a new 50-bale rotary milking platform and dairy shed on his family's 140 effective hectare farm near Te Awamutu.
Having run his own agricultural contracting business, Peter still had some of the equipment needed to do the earthworks required to create a building platform.

So with the help of former employee Rodney Garnett, owner of Rosetown Waikato Fencing and Earthworks Limited, he got stuck in.
Rodney is a builder by trade but since moving to Te Awamutu has concentrated more on earthworks, digger work and cartage, which is why he was initially hesitant to get involved in building Peter's new shed.
'I said no originally but said yes after about 18 months. You just couldn't get a builder at the time. There was a two-year waiting list and Peter had been planning on building for awhile,” says Rodney.
The new shed was built on the site of an original 10-bale walk through shed built in 1939.
Digging in
After Peter did all the large scale digger work Rodney did the smaller scale digger work and metal cartage; boxing and concrete for the shed, yards and feed pad; drainage and putting steel poles in for piping, in preparation for the welders to come in.
'It was a good job. We all worked in together with Peter and he coordinated everything.”
The shed itself was built over the top of the concrete pad laid by Rodney and Peter and then Mylchreest Electrical and PowerChill NZ (formerly known as Total Farm Services) came in to do electrical work and install the milk plant and refrigeration system.
Mylchreest Electrical did all the wiring for the lights, vats and chillers.
Keeping it cool
The refrigeration unit features a heat recovery system to pre-heat hot water to 65 degrees Celsius. PowerChill NZ director Robin McGregor says this provides 60-70 per cent energy savings.
When the water chiller isn't being used to help pre-cool milk in the vat it automatically switches to chill a reserve water tank, which is then used to help pre-cool milk, again saving energy.
'A lot of farmers struggle with getting ground water cold enough. This helps get milk into the vat cooler quicker,” says Robin.
PowerChill NZ is the South Waikato agent for GEA Westfalia Surge and the team worked with the Gallien family on their previous shed too.
'They're really good to work with,” says Peter.
'Hayden Dobbs did a great job on the installation – in face, the whole team were great to work with and we're rapt with the end result.”
The milking system Peter chose is fully automated with electronic cow identification enabling detailed records to be kept for each animal, all stored in the Dairy Plan herd management computer system.
Cows with collars
Each cow wears a special collar that enables it to be electronically identified as it enters the shed. The milk metering system then monitors and records their individual production. Milk metering information enables the system to give each cow the appropriate amount of feed based on their production, and allows them to be automatically drafted as they exit.
Bustercover provided the feed silos and feed system for the shed.
'The electronic ID is just magic. It saves hours. You can pre-plan drafting in the morning for that afternoon or do it 10 days ahead.
'There's an audio alert if they have high conductivity or low milk. If they have high conductivity, you need to monitor for mastitis so we stop the platform and test them.
'It's easy monitoring. It's doing 95 per cent of the job. It saves having to strip the whole herd to find problem cows.”
Outside of the shed the collars sense and record cows' movements to help identify potential health problems.
The plant features automatic cup removers, automatic teat spraying and a milk purge system that saves thousands of litres of milk per annum. Milking starts and stops at the push of a button, as does cleaning the plant.
'We wanted to make the job a lot more attractive and still keep it a one-man shed, so we've automated as much as we can. It also means our staff can take time off.”
The new shed has allowed significant saving on milking times.
The cows are split into two herds of 250 cows and in the former 24-bale herringbone milking took approximately two and half hours per herd.
'We did a lot of once a day milking to make life easier but we wanted to get back to twice a day. Now it takes one and a half to two hours – that's less than half the time.”
Cleantec provides dairy detergents for the plant and also installed an automatic teat spray mixer.
'You just put drums of concentrate behind the shed and the machine mixes the teat spray automatically. It saves time and is one less job you have to do. It also runs out less often and a light flashes when it's getting low,” says Peter.
Bowers and Son provided 10,000 litre and 25,000 litre water tanks for pre-cooling and wash-down.
A family affair
Peter's grandfather was the farm's original owner and dairy was then a small part of the family's business. Peter grew up on his parents' Angus stud while sharemilkers worked the dairy farm. He took over from his parents four years ago when his mother died and his father decided to retire and fulfil his dream of travelling the world.
Peter and his Anna wife decided to continue employing sharemilkers and increase cow numbers from 210 to 500 with the aim of increasing the farm's production and income.
Target production this season is 160,000kgMS, or 1200kgMS per hectare, but Peter expects this to be down about 10 per cent because of the drought.
Today the Galliens employ a contract milker and farm worker to work the dairy farm, allowing Peter to focus on developing the property and pursue other business interests.