I recently had a conversation with a friend who is involved with installing certain plant machinery in cowsheds and travels to the United States for business.

He was saying how some of the farmers in the States who are learning to pasture feed and dairy farm the way we do in New Zealand rather than housing their cows, relying on grain and the high prices of the feed are encountering protestors also.

What they are trying to achieve is the polar opposite of what is being proposed in the MacKenzie Basin, yet they are facing a barrage of complaints from animal activists.

The activists’ points being that it is cruel to have the cows out in the elements, milked in sheds with no walls – like our herringbones - and inhumane to expect them to walk from paddock to paddock and all the way to the milking shed.

You have to wonder if we put our animal rights activists and the animal rights activists in the States together in a room what they would come up with that would truly satisfy them.

Perhaps a come and go as you please system where the shed can be entered when they please, they can be milked when they like and a stocking rate of one cow to five acres, and some of the comforts we pay our taxes for prisoners to have.

When the cows develop mastitis from not being milked consistently with a farmer’s regular regime, I also wonder whether it would be allowed to give them all antibiotics to clear this infection?

Will the dairy industry ever do anything right in everyone’s eyes?

Probably not, so we are better to carry on and farm the best we can, as sustainable as we can because they will always be watching and waiting to pounce.