Why I Prefer Sole Charge

One question I get asked a lot, is why I prefer sole charge relief jobs as opposed to taking on jobs as assistant. There are several reasons, which I’ll try to explain in the following post.

I’ve been relief milking full-time since 2014, for the majority of that time in sole charge. Prior to that I was dairying full-time for 20+ years, 12 of those years on one-man jobs, as either farm manager or low order sharemilker of smaller herds. So essentially, I’m just used to working by myself.

When it comes to relief milking I tend to work better on my own, where it’s just me and the cows in the shed. I like my space. I find that when there’s somebody else in the pit they can get under my feet a bit and ‘disrupt the flow’. Working by myself, I also don’t have to tip-toe around somebody else’s moods. The only moods I have to put up with are my own.

I’m also pretty fussy in the shed. I like clean, quiet, and relaxing milkings where the cows are happily cruising in and cruising out again. I need the radios to be in the background, not blasting my ear drums, and I can’t abide the slamming of gates, yelling and screaming, bails and cups covered in crap, or somebody smoking or vaping in the pit. I’m not much of a talker either – I like to keep my head down and focus on the job at hand.

Plus when working on my own, I’m not having to second guess what the other person (or persons) are going to do. I also like to be in control of the backing gate so I can be assured the girls are not getting squished needlessly – as can happen when working alongside somebody who is impatient to get out of the shed. I just find things go so much easier and smoother when it’s just me and the cows.

On top of that, I get much better job satisfaction doing everything by myself as opposed to just helping. I have a stubbornly inherent independent streak in me that gets a buzz from achieving things single-handedly. I simply enjoy my milkings so much more when doing them on my own and having full responsibility of the shed and livestock, and the farm as a whole.

On rare occasions, I will take on an assistant job if I personally know the shed and who I’m going to be working alongside. But otherwise, sole charge milkings are my preferred choice.

There are plenty of relief milkers who much prefer to milk with other people as assistants and where they will have limited responsibilities (e.g. swapping cups, hosing down the yard etc), and there’ll be others who, like myself, choose to go for sole charge milkings, for similar, if not identical, reasons as I have given above. At the end of the day, it’s essentially up to each reliever to find the right fit for themselves. And sole charge milkings suit me to a T.