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Spectrum was a long-running weekly radio documentary series which captured the essence of New Zealand from 1972 to 2016. Alwyn Owen and Jack Perkins produced the series for many years, creating a valuable library of New Zealand oral history.
This episode looks at a spring day in the life of dairy farmer Len Scott and his family of South Taranaki.
Its almost calving season. The busiest time of the year for Len Scott and his family. The Scott family own 140 hectares of South Taranaki land near Kapuni. Theirs is three-times the size of an average Taranaki holding, with a 60 bale rotary milking table which is valued at upwards of $100,000 and a herd of 420.
One of Len's sons, Grant, owns part of the herd and he and his wife work in partnership with the rest of the family. Len Scott also works with his teenaged son Roger and his wife Gwen. Perkins assures the listeners that Gwen is equally good at managing the milking table as she is at making breakfast.
Jack Perkins spends the day with Scott. Today there is a sick cow which has prompted Scott to ring the vet. The vet is checking on a cow with mastitis. Scott recounts a difficult calving he experienced the other night.
At 6am Perkins joins the team. Perkins and Scott are sorting the cows by milk for manufacture supply and by colostrum supply. Len and Gwen know all the cows by their numbers.
Len checks on the cow that he helped through a tricky calving. Bull calves are kept for a few days and then taken to a freezing works to be slaughtered. Bobby calf meat is mostly used for sandwich spreads while the skin is used for soft leather. The stomach which contains rennet is used for cheese. There is little wasted. The skeleton is used as bone meal.