Been reading TFF alot in recent years for advice, its unreal how many questions can be answered on here, alot of great farmers sharing each-others knowledge on things ! Here is my turn to ask for some advice (made a account today)
Anyway.... small background on myself, brought up on a sheep farm in north Ceredigion at the age of 14 stumbled upon a massive interest in dairy farming through helping out on my aunties/uncles dairy farm. Helped out there whenever possible where eventually i lived with them on the farm from the age of 15-17, attended College for 2 years finished college with 3 distinctions. Was going to go on to university but my father had a farming accident and broke his back leading to the fact i had to return to the farm. Slowly dad got better and with the help of my brother the farm could manage without me. Then i got a job as a assistant herdsman on a local dairy farm. 350 cows AYR calving pedigree holsteins. only farms staff was the son, the Father (70 yrs old) me and a relief milker who milked with me at night. worked 92 hours a week every week got one week off a year if that ! i never complained about any of this just got on with it because i treated the place like my home. 3 years into this job at the age of 20 me and my girlfriend bought a house in the local village then things turned sour. the father and son kept saying that i was ungrateful for their caravan and they were paying me too much if i could afford a house at the age of 20 (was on £8 an hour self employed). moving on... tolerated them for another year even though they were getting worse by the day. Then my uncle was attacked by a bull and suffered heart issues. so my cousin asked if i would help him with his dad being out of action. I couldn't at first because it was unfair on my current employer to leave them in the s**t. eventually things got worse and i told them to stuff their job. Then i helped my cousin for the past year really enjoyed it. Then i was approached by another farmer who i had met whilst staying in his cottage on holidays saying he was looking for a farm manager on his 450 cow autumn block calving herd averaging 9,800litres up near telford. wasn't very interested at first but then he mentioned there was a salary of £40,000 per year, free 5 bed house all bills payed for and a profit share on top of that if things went well ! i'd be pretty stupid not to atleast hear him out. went up to see the farm again then made the decision to try it on a 3 month period. (uncle was back in action by this time) first week went well though he was a really nice bloke then the second week he started shouting at his polish worker and spoke to him in a horrible way. I was quite shocked poor polish guy had not done anything wrong ! on the farm he had a amazing woman who reared the calves for him and did all the farm paper work and milked a fair amount too. the calves were reared to a high standard unlike anything ive seen before. out of 450 calves born only 1 died after birth ! Moving on week 3 he was shouting at her telling her to f**k off and that she was useless and did this for 5 days on the trot ! not sure why or how she tolerated him, week 4 was obviously my turn! from the monday morning he was just a pri*k. he was doing the heat detection on the sunday night and who ever did the heat detection was supposed to put the cow numbers in the draft gate ready for the next milking. so we milked the cows (me and the polish) then at the end of milking i went to the yard to see how many cows needed serving and there was 0 cows there. he comes out and shouts why haven't you drafted the bulling cows ! my response was "it was you who went round last night so you should have done it" (maybe i should have checked also) found the 6 bulling cows got them in and got them served. moving onto tuesday again he was raging at me for no reason same story on wednesday. on the thursday morning i go out for morning milking 4:10am start preping a row and he shouts "put the clusters on you stupid welsh c**t" at this point i had enough, finished milking got my breakfast and packed the car up with my stuff. then i phone him to come over to talk to me. he comes over in a massive shock that my car was packed and the house was empty. I told him what i thought of him and said i dont like the way you treat your staff.and its not going to work if you'r attitude stays this way. his response being "you'll never change me mate" he tries to make me stay, but i told him im going home to have a long think about this job and that i would make my decision by next week.
should i give him a second chance ?
Sorry for such a boring long post ! but any comments and advice would be much appreciated.
Anyway.... small background on myself, brought up on a sheep farm in north Ceredigion at the age of 14 stumbled upon a massive interest in dairy farming through helping out on my aunties/uncles dairy farm. Helped out there whenever possible where eventually i lived with them on the farm from the age of 15-17, attended College for 2 years finished college with 3 distinctions. Was going to go on to university but my father had a farming accident and broke his back leading to the fact i had to return to the farm. Slowly dad got better and with the help of my brother the farm could manage without me. Then i got a job as a assistant herdsman on a local dairy farm. 350 cows AYR calving pedigree holsteins. only farms staff was the son, the Father (70 yrs old) me and a relief milker who milked with me at night. worked 92 hours a week every week got one week off a year if that ! i never complained about any of this just got on with it because i treated the place like my home. 3 years into this job at the age of 20 me and my girlfriend bought a house in the local village then things turned sour. the father and son kept saying that i was ungrateful for their caravan and they were paying me too much if i could afford a house at the age of 20 (was on £8 an hour self employed). moving on... tolerated them for another year even though they were getting worse by the day. Then my uncle was attacked by a bull and suffered heart issues. so my cousin asked if i would help him with his dad being out of action. I couldn't at first because it was unfair on my current employer to leave them in the s**t. eventually things got worse and i told them to stuff their job. Then i helped my cousin for the past year really enjoyed it. Then i was approached by another farmer who i had met whilst staying in his cottage on holidays saying he was looking for a farm manager on his 450 cow autumn block calving herd averaging 9,800litres up near telford. wasn't very interested at first but then he mentioned there was a salary of £40,000 per year, free 5 bed house all bills payed for and a profit share on top of that if things went well ! i'd be pretty stupid not to atleast hear him out. went up to see the farm again then made the decision to try it on a 3 month period. (uncle was back in action by this time) first week went well though he was a really nice bloke then the second week he started shouting at his polish worker and spoke to him in a horrible way. I was quite shocked poor polish guy had not done anything wrong ! on the farm he had a amazing woman who reared the calves for him and did all the farm paper work and milked a fair amount too. the calves were reared to a high standard unlike anything ive seen before. out of 450 calves born only 1 died after birth ! Moving on week 3 he was shouting at her telling her to f**k off and that she was useless and did this for 5 days on the trot ! not sure why or how she tolerated him, week 4 was obviously my turn! from the monday morning he was just a pri*k. he was doing the heat detection on the sunday night and who ever did the heat detection was supposed to put the cow numbers in the draft gate ready for the next milking. so we milked the cows (me and the polish) then at the end of milking i went to the yard to see how many cows needed serving and there was 0 cows there. he comes out and shouts why haven't you drafted the bulling cows ! my response was "it was you who went round last night so you should have done it" (maybe i should have checked also) found the 6 bulling cows got them in and got them served. moving onto tuesday again he was raging at me for no reason same story on wednesday. on the thursday morning i go out for morning milking 4:10am start preping a row and he shouts "put the clusters on you stupid welsh c**t" at this point i had enough, finished milking got my breakfast and packed the car up with my stuff. then i phone him to come over to talk to me. he comes over in a massive shock that my car was packed and the house was empty. I told him what i thought of him and said i dont like the way you treat your staff.and its not going to work if you'r attitude stays this way. his response being "you'll never change me mate" he tries to make me stay, but i told him im going home to have a long think about this job and that i would make my decision by next week.
should i give him a second chance ?
Sorry for such a boring long post ! but any comments and advice would be much appreciated.
