DJ & LJ Bowers

The 80 year old passionate Victorian Dairy farmer, father, grandfather and owner of DJ & LJ Bowers with wife Linda, has been a part of the farming industry for over 60 years, milking cows from the age of 9 to help out his mother.  Describing as being in the dairy basically from birth while his father was away at war.

As a kid, Don used to separate the milk and give the skim milk to the pigs and calves.  Milk and cream was only stored in cans and only the cream was sold, with it only picked up three times per week!  Over the years, Don has witnessed vast changes surrounding farm safety, especially over this past decade with the occurrence of an immense increase of farm safety information readily available to us. 

After doing this all his life, Don reminds us that’s it’s easy to forget how dangerous things actually are. Back in the day, he notes, there were no such thing as safety covers, rollover frames, labelling etc, and now there is constantly new safety information helping us to improve because there are so many things that can actually maim and kill farmers and their employees.

Don has recently semi-retired, and has moved across many parts of regional Victoria prior to settling down near Wodonga, where he’s been for over 27 years.   He is currently rearing 38 calves, as well as running steers and heifers across 350 acres, on paddocks he set up for rotational grazing.

Don has seen it all, and is an inspiration to us all.

Despite Don’s expert knowledge surrounding farm safety he proactively seeks to improve, holding the belief that if you run your business right, your staff, animals and farm will operate at their optimum, with safety being a huge contributing factor to this.

Recently, Don had John, our Senior Farm Safety consultant visit him at Wodonga. While Don has never felt particularly worried about his safety or the safety of those around him, he does engage seasonal workers and wanted to ensure that different employees working on the farm at different times were provided an optimal workspace to ensure their safety.

Don mentions you can be in big trouble if someone gets hurt so it’s best to ensure everything is right, with his making our Farms Safer session wrapping up within an hour timeframe.

Don received seatbelt advice which was extremely helpful, as well as advice surrounding chemical labelling which Don notes could prevent someone from getting hurt or from putting the ‘wrong stuff in the wrong thing’ .

John was able to customize a plan to suit Don’s needs, “He told us everything that should be done and helped us prevent fines, and you can receive big fines and even end up in jail if you don’t take a proactive outlook toward safety”.

Thanks to our friends at Dairy Australia who encouraged Don to engage with our free program.

Don let us know the invaluable information he received from John has been incorporated to help improve the safety of those on the farm, which also did not come at a large time of financial expense to integrate.