Pentre Farm Project Update: Evaluating the effectiveness of chicory in Welsh sheep systems - Preparing ahead for year 2

Over recent months, demonstration farmer Hugh Jones has been carefully managing the trial fields to ensure an adequate, yet not excessive grass cover is available for the lambs once weaned. This has involved working with Rhys Williams, Precision Grazing Ltd to calculate the demand of different stock groups that are grazing the paddocks within the rotation, as well as the supply available. Should grass covers exceed requirements at the time of weaning, lamb performance will be impacted.

AgriNet software has been used to calculate rotation length, as well as manage the number of paddocks within the rotation. An additional field was added to the rotation in the spring as stock demand exceeded the grass supply at this stage. Hugh has been inputting sward height measurements from plate meter readings into the software, which is used along with the animal demand figures to produce a grass wedge for the rotation, as seen in graph 1.

Graph 1. Actual cover of paddocks and demand figures for Pentre Farm

In addition to this, Hugh has been utilising the LoRaWAN ‘Dual Temp’ sensor that is located in one of the trial fields alongside the grass measurements (see figure 1). This sensor regularly measures soil and air temperature, with the information sent via a gateway on the farm to a visual dashboard available online. This data has been inputted to AgriNet and was particularly useful at the beginning of the growing season. Going forward, grass growth and soil temperature measurements will continue to be evaluated side-by-side to determine whether there is a correlation or not between these variables.

Figure 1. A LoRaWAN ‘Dual Temp’ sensor located in one of the trial fields

The next steps include further sub-division of the trial fields prior to weaning to ensure that the chicory treatment in particular is appropriately grazed (i.e. is not overgrown). This will result in eight paddocks per treatment. The lambs will be weaned at the end of July and data on sward and lamb performance will be collected and analysed.