Smart Start is a practical course that happens on farm in an active learning environment. It provides basic skills on livestock handling, preparation for calving, milking and mating. It also has a strong focus on animal welfare while ensuring you stay safe in the workplace.

With support and supervision you'll learn to complete a range of dairy farming production tasks, safely and efficiently.

An apprentice will work alongside their employer to grow their skills, and will ‘earn while they learn’, attend local learning events and gain NZQA-recognised qualifications.

As an apprentice you'll receive personal mentoring and extra support from your Primary ITO Training Adviser. They will meet with you and your employer regularly throughout the year to help you set goals and review your progress.

Your local Primary ITO Training Adviser can talk you through the available apprenticeship options. An apprenticeship can take anywhere between 2 to 3.5 years to complete.

You'll learn how to safely milk animals and maintain strict cleanliness of the equipment and machinery to ensure quality milk. You'll also learn to effectively manage dairy effluent.

This is a comprehensive husbandry programme where you'll learn skills involved in the complete livestock lifecycle. From understanding the reproductive process to birth, weaning, selection and through to sale - you'll be involved in every aspect of the process. You'll also dig deeper into the anatomy and physiology, protecting and treating stock to maintain peak health.

You'll learn everything you need to know to maximise feed supply. You'll understand the management of soil and pasture and the impacts of climate variation. You'll also assist with feeding and water supply to meet production targets.

You'll learn to lead and manage all aspects of a dairy farm ensuring peak productivity of your livestock, land and machinery – all feeding into consistent, high quality milk to market. From benchmarking to maintenance, day to day management reporting to implementing health, breeding and feeding plans. This is a valuable, comprehensive course for developing leaders.

On completion of this programme you'll be armed with deep, detailed knowledge on all aspects of production management. You'll be in a position to make sound decisions to maximise production and financial returns. You'll analyse production systems against industry benchmarks, have the knowledge to recommend improvement strategies for specific production systems and develop, implement and monitor plans for feeding, breeding and animal health.

With this programme you'll acquire all the skills you'll need to run a successful agribusiness. You'll learn to develop a complete financial plan for a specific agribusiness or section of it. You'll learn to manage tax, employment and capital requirements and understand effective ways to hire and manage staff. You'll be able to develop plans for health and safety, environmental management as well as a full business plan and agribusiness report. 

Visit www.primaryitodiploma.co.nz for more information.

This programme provides a solid grounding in understanding how to milk dairy stock and identifying and treating problems in livestock.

You'll understand what's required to maintain cleanliness and hygiene to ensure quality milk output. You'll learn about cleaning processes, plant and equipment maintenance and undertake risk analysis while developing solutions.

This is your step into supervising. You'll be able to develop operating procedures to maintain milk quality and supervise milk harvesting to optimise milk quality, efficiency and yield.

This will improve your awareness, knowledge and skills to effectively deal with farm effluent. You'll learn how to run and maintain an effluent system, understanding everyone's role in making that happen. You'll see how effluent can improve pasture growth and get to grips with the legal and regulatory requirements involved with farm effluent.

This short programme with an interactive two-day workshop will provide your team with the right knowledge to effectively evaluate an effluent system, understand the legal requirements and implications of poor management and put a plan in place to manage the effluent system in your business.

This one-day interactive workshop will give you the skills needed to grow an effective, safe team that you can rely on. You'll learn how to motivate, train and assess employees to ensure they perform to a consistently high standard. 

This course covers all of the essentials and more. It is the minimum requirement for high risk workplaces, and it meets the Department of Labour First Aid for Workplaces Standard. 

This 1-day course is a revalidation of your first aid skills, keeping your knowledge up to date and relevant.