New Zealand's sheep‐milking sector is young. We conducted a cross‐sectional study of 20 commercial farms (~50% of the industry) in 2022–2023. Using a standardised questionnaire, in‐person interviews (May–June 2023) with owners/managers captured information on farm scale, staffing, lambing and lamb management, milk harvesting, milking facilities/procedures, and animal health practices. Farms had operated a median of four seasons. Practices varied widely, particularly in lamb‐removal timing and milk‐harvesting period; most farmers who supplied milk to processors separated lambs at ≤10 days of age, while on‐farm processors separated lambs and ewes later and ran more flexible seasons. Staffing did not scale consistently with flock size; automation was partial (in‐shed feeding was common, automatic cup removers were present on one‐third of farms, and no farms had automatic teat sprayers). Common features were spring lambing, predominantly outdoor management, selenium supplementation, and clostridial vaccination. Milk recording and ewe data were limited. We present a New Zealand‐specific baseline and highlight opportunities: strengthen ewe and milk data; evaluate staffing and automation; clarify the effectiveness and practicality of milking‐hygiene interventions; and implement evidence‐based trace‐element and leptospirosis risk management. Addressing these will support benchmarking, genetic gains, efficiency, productivity and animal health under New Zealand's pasture‐based systems.
Chambers et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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