Demonstration Site Project - Plas Farm

Project Aims:

Demonstrate cutting edge technology and its uses in precision farming to drive efficiency and production in a grass and arable system.

Strategic Objective:

This project will work towards the Strategic Objective of increasing on-farm output from the Welsh red meat sector, through maximising outputs from a grass-based system and reducing resilience on bought in (imported) feed.

Project in Practice:

150 acres (60ha) of mixed arable and grassland will be mapped in detail at Plas using a Veris scanner.
This device measures electrical conductivity of the soil at two depths – 30 cm and 90cm.
This data is then interpreted to create a soil map showing the variation within the field, which is then split into management zones.
Each management zone is sampled to provide a representative sample for each area and sent for lab analysis to determine nutrient status and soil texture.

Project Updates:

Reducing the Use of Antibiotics at Lambing

Project aims:

Ensure ewes are in optimum condition at lambing to produce good quality and adequate quantity of colostrum in order to reduce the use of antibiotics as a precautionary measure.
Explore the role colostrum plays in lamb performance.

Strategic objectives:

Project in practice:

Three weeks before lambing, ewes will be body condition scored and blood samples analysed to create a metabolic profile. The metabolic profile measures levels of energy, protein, minerals and trace elements and enables adjustment of the diet prior to lambing to minimise health risks.
Blood samples will be collected from 44 lambs - a mix of singles, twins and triplets - at 2-5 days old and tested for level of immunoglobulin, which is an indication of the quality and volume of colostrum absorbed.
The lambs will also be weighed on sampling day and given an ID tag for future identification to monitor growth rate and worm burden. During the season these lambs will be individually FEC sampled to monitor their worm burden.
Another 30 lambs will be screened for immunoglobulin levels using a refractometer and up to 10 sick lambs will also be sampled for colostrum adsorption levels.
Lambs will be weighed at birth, eight weeks and at slaughter to evaluate growth rates. Any health issues will also be recorded.

Project update:

A representative number of ewes from first batch to lamb were blood sampled at the end of December 2016 and samples sent away to determine their Metabolic Profile.
In total, 24 ewes were samples, 8 triplets, 8 twins and 8 singles. The results for the triplet and single bearing ewes was satisfactory, but the twin bearing ewes were slightly low on energy.
In response to this, these ewe’s will now be receiving 720g per day of concentrates for the last three weeks of pregnancy, 120g more than they would have been fed if they were not sampled.
Lambing will be starting on the 18th of January 2017, with the first batch of lambs due to sampled for colostrum absorption around the 1st of February.

Project Updates:

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