Summer Science Internships

2 weeks ago

Waikato, New Zealand DairyNZ Full time

Science Summer Internships, Waikato

**Optimising and reducing nitrogen in dairy farm systems**

DairyNZ has an exciting opportunity for an undergraduate student to contribute to our 7-year Low Nitrogen Systems programme. This internship will see you gain valuable experience working with data from a farm trial investigating farm-level factors associated with divergent bulk milk urea on commercial farms in Waikato and Canterbury.

With your enthusiasm to give anything a go, this internship will involve helping our team collect and process pasture and supplement samples, estimate pasture mass using a plate meter and be involved in the day-to-day running of a farmlet research trial. You will also work with a large dataset of pasture, supplement and farm management information collected from project dairy farms to explore the links with the bulk milk urea levels measured in the milk. Opportunities will include data visualisation and analysis using R.

Along with opportunities to develop your data analysis skills using R, you’ll also gain insights into dairy farm management and the resulting feed intake of the herd, and its impact on the nitrogen cycle inside the farm gate. This work is part of a wider programme aimed at practical and implementable farm management solutions that will significantly reduce nitrogen loss from dairy farm systems.

This internship is part of our Māori internship programme which has been running for the past four years. During your internship we will incorporate opportunities for you to engage in mātauranga Māori including an overnight wānanga. We also support you post-internship with your study and/or careeer aspirations.

**Key requirements**:

- A team player who’s highly motivated and willing to learn
- Able to follow instructions and processes
- Strong attention to detail
- Current undergraduate student, studying biology, agricultural or environmental science, computer science, economics or similar discipline
- Basic foundation in statistics, data analysis and report writing
- Have an interest in working with animals and/or agriculture
- Knowledge of, or interest in, Mātauranga Māori

**Suitability**:

- Previous knowledge & experience in dairying is not a requirement
- Previous knowledge of R is not a requirement
- Suitable for any 1st to 3rd year, current undergraduate student

**Location**: There are two internships available one in Newstead, Hamilton, and the other in Lincoln, Canterbury.

**Applications close**: Sunday 13th August 2023

**To appl**y**:

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