From Scotland to Gloucestershire, educational institutes are ensuring they are providing top quality and innovative learning by harnessing new technologies on farm and in the classroom.
Agricultural research at Scotlands Rural College (SRUCs) Kirkton and Auchtertyre farms has continued to shift towards the use of technology on farms in recent years.
Established as a research and demonstration site more than 50 years ago, the two adjacent farms continue to provide a unique on-farm teaching facility across their 2,200 hectares of ground.
Rising from 170m to more than 1,000m, land ranges from inbye grassland to other moorland and woodland habitats characteristic of hill farming and crofting.
Developed
During this last five decades, the farms, which are in a high rainfall area in the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, have been developed as a research resource for hill farmers around the world.
The farms currently have three main flocks - the Kirkton flock, made up of 600 breeding ewes for high intervention research, the Auchtertyre flock, a 420-ewe high hill flock typical to hill and common grazing areas across the Highlands and Islands and the Coirre flock, a 120-ewe flock which was re-established in 2015 on an upland area of the farm where grazing ceased 12 years ago.
The farms are also building up a small herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle following the reestablishment of cattle seven years ago.
With the focus of research continuing to shift towards precision technology in the past 20 years, projects have included those looking at Electronic Identification (EID) tag associated technology including a targeted selective treatment approach, GPS-tracking collars and selective breeding programmes based on Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs).
Prof Davy McCracken, head of SRUCs hill and mountain research centre, says: The scale and diversity of the farms mean that they can be used for both systems scale and component scale research and demonstration.
He highlights a recent focus on comparing and contrasting the relevance of applying a range of Precision Livestock Farming techniques within the Kirkton flock, such as the labour savings and performance benefits to be gained by using EID tag associated technology and only treating lambs with anti-parasitic chemicals if their growth rate suggests they need treatment using a Targeted Selective Treatment approach in association with Moredun Research Institute.
We have also started to look more at the impacts, positive and negative, of grazing animals on different habitats and parts of the farm using GPS-tracking collars, adds Prof McCracken.
Systems research
The Kirkton flock are also the focus of RESAS funded research comparing and contrasting two differing systems of management, one where part of the flock is making greater use of grazing available on the hill throughout the year while the remainder of the flock are more focused on the inbye fields and lower parts of the hill.
For the past 25 years, the Kirkton flock has also been used to demonstrate the benefits to be gained from long term genetic enhancement through selecting breeding animals based on EBVs.
Prof McCracken says: Within the flock there is a line of Scottish Blackface ewes with high EBVs which are being compared and contrasted with a line of other Scottish Blackface ewes with average EBVs.
For the past nine years, both lines of Scottish Blackface have also been compared and contrasted with Welsh Lleyn breeding ewes.
Elsewhere and higher parts of the farms also form the focus of a second RESAS funded research project, where the intended and unintended consequences of rewilding are being investigated.
The farms also offer scope for research and demonstration in a range of other agricultural and environmental challenges. The most obvious is blackloss, which alongside many hill farms and crofts across Scotland affects the Auchtertyre flock and is currently being investigated as a PhD project.
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