Dairy Farm Worker CV Examples & Writing Guide

This sample is for a milker with about seven years on dairy farms, who moved from a 180-cow family farm with an abreast parlour to a 1,400-cow herd with a 40-point parallel parlour and now runs a shift. The name and farms are made up. Copy the shape, then put in your own herd sizes, parlour type and milk quality numbers.

Dairy hiring is quick and practical. Most farms will ring you the same week and put you in the parlour for a trial milking. The CV just has to get you that call.

• Herd size and parlour type. Abreast, herringbone, parallel, rotary or robots (automatic milking). Each is a different job, and a farm wants someone who has already done theirs.
• Your milking routine. Farms care that you pre-dip, foremilk every quarter, wipe dry and attach in the right window, then post-dip. Being able to describe your routine in one line signals a trained milker.
• Milk quality numbers. Bulk tank somatic cell count, Bactoscan, litres per cow, and whether the farm stayed in its milk buyer's top quality band (with buyers such as Arla or First Milk, for example) while you were there. This is the closest thing dairy has to a scorecard.
• Cow sense. Can you spot a lame cow, a cow off her feed, a mastitis case or a cow starting to calve. Say how many cases you caught and what you did next.
• Reliability at unsocial hours. Milking starts at 3 or 4 am on many farms and runs seven days a week. If you have held an early shift for years without missing days, put that in writing.
• Machinery and licences. Tractor, skid steer, telehandler, feeder wagon, and whether you have a driving licence. Small farms often need one person to do all of it.

“I can teach the parlour in a week. What I cannot teach is turning up at three in the morning in February, seven days on, and still noticing that cow 4412 is standing wrong. So tell me your herd size, your cell count and how long you stayed at your last farm.”

People search for the dairy farm worker job description and then paste it straight onto a CV. That is the wrong direction. Take each duty and turn it into something you did, with a count attached.

Keep the list short and concrete. A farmer is scanning for equipment names and procedures they recognise, not adjectives.

• Milking: parlour type you have run (abreast, herringbone, parallel, rotary, robotic), milking routine and prep-lag, cluster attachment and removal, teat dipping, cluster flushing, parlour wash-up and chemical handling.
• Herd health: mastitis detection, California Mastitis Test, mobility scoring, foot trimming assistance, heat detection, treatment records and milk withdrawal discipline, vaccinating and dosing under veterinary protocol, helping on TB testing days.
• Calving and calves: calving assistance and malpresentations, colostrum collection and feeding, colostrometer or Brix testing, milk replacer mixing, hutch and group pen management, weaning.
• Feed and machinery: total mixed ration mixing, pushing up feed, silage face management, tractor, skid steer, telehandler, scraping out and slurry safety, bedding with sand, sawdust or straw.
• Records and software: Uniform-Agri, Herdwatch, DelPro, Lely Horizon or whichever system your farm used. Naming the software is worth a lot on a bigger dairy.
• Compliance: Red Tractor Dairy standards, dairy hygiene rules, cattle passports and movement reporting, TB testing (APHA), biosecurity rules, chemical safety.

Most dairy farms will train a milker. The parlour routine takes a week or two to learn. What they cannot fix is someone who quits after four early mornings, so an entry-level CV has to argue that you know what you are signing up for.

1. 1Say plainly that you understand the hours: early starts, seven-day rotas, weekends and bank holidays, and outdoor work in bad weather. One honest sentence beats a paragraph of enthusiasm.
2. 2Pull anything with animals to the top. Beef, sheep, horses, poultry, Young Farmers' stock judging, a job at a vet practice, even helping on a relative's farm. Give animal numbers.
3. 3Add physical jobs that prove stamina and reliability: warehouse, construction, landscaping, food production, a packhouse. Give shift lengths and attendance.
4. 4List any machinery you can operate, plus your driving licence. A tractor or skid steer certificate moves you up the list.
5. 5Take a short course if you can. A land-based college dairy short course, a DIY AI course or a milk quality workshop shows you are serious and gives you the vocabulary.
6. 6Keep it to one page and put your mobile number at the top in large type. Farms ring, they do not email.

• One page. Two only if you have ten years across several farms and a herd manager title. Farmers read these on a phone in the farm office between milkings.
• Plain layout, no columns, no graphics. Many dairy farms and agricultural recruiters now advertise on job boards that run the file through an applicant tracking system, and a two-column CV scrambles.
• No photo, no date of birth and no marital status on a UK CV. Applying to a farm in Ireland or New Zealand, the same content works, and job titles such as dairy farm assistant, herdsperson or herd manager are used there too.
• State your right to work in the UK plainly if it is relevant. Most dairy jobs are year-round rather than seasonal, so employers care about a long-term arrangement.
• Say whether you need accommodation or can travel to the farm. Many dairy farms offer a farm cottage or caravan and it affects who they call first.
• List two referees with phone numbers, ideally a previous herd manager. Dairy hiring runs on phone references more than almost any other field.