The Day Dad Blew up the Cowshed

NZ author Jenny Sommervell, illustrations by Jenny's sister, Margery Fern

Like many 'rehab farmers', Grandpa had put the explosives skills he used at Gallipolli to good use on the farm, blowing out tree stumps and removing unwanted rocks. Blowing up the cowshed was the same idea - just on a bigger scale!

Dad was a farmer who liked trying out new ideas. In the 1970s he read about a new turnstyle rotary milking shed and it caught his interest. At that time milking sheds were either back-breaking, traditional walk-through sheds, which were being phased out (what Dad had), or the upgraded herringbone, where milkers stood in a rectangular pit and worked the cows on either side. The rotary shed moved the cows round on a rotating turn-style while they were being milked and then they backed off.

The Dairy Board finally gave the rotary cowshed full approval in the early seventies and farmers started to build them. Dad had a look at the prototype in operation and decided to build the first rotary shed in Hawkes Bay. But to put in the new cowshed the old shed with its thick concrete floor, walls and foundations had to be removed...!

Dramatic and hilarious, this true Kiwi story comes with an educational section about the ground-breaking invention of the first rotary cowshed in New Zealand by a Taranaki dairy farmer.

‘This is a true NZ down-on-the-farm story written in catchy rhyme which will make you shake your head and laugh out loud.’ - Sue Hoyle, Top Title in Upstart magazine

Condition: Deadstock, NEW

No. pages 44 pages

Dimensions: 210mm X 277mm