No milk today, the power's gone away

A storm on Sunday, which saw blackouts throughout much of the region, meant many dairy farmers were left with no way of milking their cows.

As Farm Weekly went to print on Tuesday some farmers had been unable to milk since Sunday morning.

Lachlan Fry, Brunswick, said his farm lost power about 2pm on Sunday and he was unable to milk Sunday afternoon or Monday morning.

Mr Fry said he was given no indication of when the power was set to come back on and subsequently trucked cows to a friend's property.

"We had some friends in Harvey who had a generator and they were able to milk our cows," Lachlan said.

"They will stay there for the next few days and we will just have to see what we get out of this storm tonight and go from there.

"We are lucky as I know there are a lot of farmers who don't have generators and I don't know how they are coping."

Clayton and Carla Minson, Roelands, faced a similar problem.

Ms Minson said they realised the power could be out for a while and organised a generator to be hooked up to the dairy on Sunday night.

Despite their quick thinking the cows still went 24 hours without being milked.

"They have really dropped back in production but hopefully they will come back up again as we were able to start milking Monday morning," Ms Minson said.

"But some will most likely have to be dried off sooner than normal."

She said they had heard of some dairy farmers who hadn't milked by Monday night and were walking their cows to nearby dairies with power or generators.