From zoos to sheep milking

Pirongia couple Aaron and Louise Gilmore have taken a huge career change in their stride – two years ago they went from zoo keepers to sheep milkers.

Aaron is dairy manager of Spring Sheep’s Monavale farm near Cambridge, while Louise is working part time for a sheep milking operation on the Paterangi-Te Awamutu road.

Aaron grew up in Rangiora in North Canterbury, although his grandparents were rural, and Louise was a member of the van der Sande family that managed the famous DB Clydesdale horses. It was an idyllic childhood with parents Nick and Jill, she says.

“We went to school, of course, but also travelled around the country with the horses. Dad’s just released a book about all our adventures. Mum and Dad met through horses.”

Louise did a Bachelor of Science at Waikato, which resulted in a work placement at Hamilton Zoo.

“I finished my degree and then just kept working at the zoo. I was there for 11 years,” she explains.

Wanting to spend time outside and with animals, Aaron started working at Orana Park when he was 15. Many years later, he met Louise during an animal transfer between the two zoos.

“I took a zebra down there, that was how we met, and then about a year later he bought a water buck [African antelope] up here. We kept in touch and about six months later he moved to Hamilton and started working at the zoo too.”

They married in 2018. By that stage, Aaron was team leader of ungulates– giraffes, rhinos, etc. – and Louise was team leader of primates. But underneath their passion for the work they did in the zoo, was a desire to go farming together. They found it hard to learn about agriculture, as most courses revolve around full-time study, or there is a requirement for you to be working on a farm while studying.

“We had a really good animal husbandry background, and I was from a farming background anyway, yet we were in an industry that wasn't your typical farming scenario. There wasn’t anything for people like us. In the end, we got in touch with Spring Sheep … the sustainability side of their business appealed to us, and the more we saw, the more we were like, ‘hey, this is kind of cool’.”

Because the couple were still working, Louise’s parents went to a Spring Sheep open day at Monavale and returned with positive comments.

“They said the people were friendly, the company seemed great, and had a good handle on where they were going with the sheep milking.”

This is where New Zealand’s two degrees of separation comes into play – not once, but twice. Louise was giving a tiger talk at the zoo about a year later, and she started talking to a young woman keen on being a zookeeper. Long story short, the man with her was managing Monavale, and they stayed in touch.

“Eventually a job came up … Aaron started just before lambing, and I was due to have our first baby, which was terrible timing, in hindsight,” she says, laughing. “He was full steam ahead with the lambing side of things and I took a year’s maternity leave after I had Luke [now 20 months].

“We were asking ourselves if I wanted to look at cutting my hours back and maybe look at getting into what Aaron was doing because our ultimate goal was to get onto a farm and be a managing unit ourselves.”

They were still contemplating Louise’s return to work when another local opportunity arose and she left the zoo to work at a sheep-milking farm “just up the road” owned by the family of a girl she went to primary school with, who manages the operation with her husband. Louise offered to help them – Matthew and Katherine Spataro – with lambing and was in turn offered the perfect 20-25 hours a week she needed to work around baby Luke. ?They supply the Spring Sheep Milk Company.

Over at Monavale, Aaron moved up the ladder to 2IC and then dairy manager. The farm peak milks 840 sheep on 50 hectares, including grass pasture and a chicory-clover mix, as well as an in-shed feed system.

“What we’re doing at the moment is going really, really well, and we're really enjoying it,” Louise says. “Aaron's still learning a lot, and the company is great to work for and so supportive.”

She has done an Understanding Your Farming Business with the Agri Women’s Development Trust.

“I did that online while Luke was young. It was brilliant. I learnt so much. I’m also reading through a whole lot of old Lincoln books, and thinking about some sustainable agriculture classes I did back then, and to be honest, my dad was such a good farmer, he’s a wealth of knowledge for us as well.

“Aaron also gets so much support from the managers within Spring Sheep. Things like cropping and pasture management are the kind of thing we didn’t have to do at the zoo. We know animal husbandry and animal welfare; we’re learning the rest as we go.”

The sheep milking industry is still young, with plenty of opportunities, and the Gilmores are well placed to take advantage of them.

Written for Stuff/Farming First Waikato