Generators are providing "peace of mind" on a storm-damaged dairy farm in Western Southland.
Dairy farm owner Katrina Thomas, of Wreys Bush, said a "huge" macrocarpa tree fell on a power line which supplies electricity to her cow shed.
As soon as the storm hit, they plugged their generator into the dairy shed to continue milking about 940 cows and chilling the vats.
A generator was bought and the shed was wired to run it when the farm was converted to dairy more than a decade ago.
"That’s the bonus of future-proofing your farm and it means you can continue your business."
Her automatic calf-feeding system could not be used without a power supply.
"Fortunately, I never got rid of my manual feeders and I could use a little generator to pump milk in and feed the calves."
All of the housing on-farm for staff, including her contract milker, were wired earlier this year so a generator could be easily connected, she said.
"Future-proofing the houses definitely paid off."
The health of the cows had been able to be maintained since the storm hit.
As the farm had power from the generators, she was able to run her Starlink satellite internet and continuing communicating on apps.
"We were very, very fortunate that we had a lot of systems in place."
A big focus on the farm now was maintaining generators, filling them with diesel and oil.
Vet South co-founder Mark Bryan, of Winton, said since the storm, vets at the clinic had seen a lot of dairy herds with a high somatic cell count, which in some indicated an infection such as mastitis, an inflammation of a cow’s udder.
"We’re also getting an awful lot of metabolic issues."
Many farms without power had lost the ability to mechanically administer animal health supplements in drinking water and some cows had not got appropriate magnesium levels, which had caused issues, Dr Bryan said.
"It’s also the middle of a bunch of mating programmes for many farmers and we’re unsure how the past few days will impact these and the subsequent conception rates."
