My next work placement has taken me to the Teagasc Research Centre in Grange, Co Meath. Teagasc is the agriculture and food development authority in Ireland. Grange is one of the world’s leading beef production research facilities and is home to approximately 1,400 cattle.

The key focus of the research trials carried out at Grange is to advance the beef sector in a wide range of ways, from herd fertility to profitability and animal husbandry. There are multiple research trials being conducted on the large site at any one time and it is a great experience to be working in such a busy and exciting environment.

I spend most of my time shadowing PhD students and assisting them with the various projects they are working on. This has the added benefit of seeing first hand what is involved in a PhD programme - an option which I may decide to pursue next year once I finish my undergraduate degree in May. I have been lucky to be able to follow a few different trials during my time there, as we are free to pop into any of the numerous sheds and see what is happening. This gives us a chance to get a taste of all the trials being conducted.

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Most mornings I observe the feed efficiency trial that involves taking fecal samples from all the steers in the trial. This can take up to an hour for all steers to be sampled and is not the best job for a Monday morning. Another key project I have been involved in deals with using a variety different feeding strategies for finishing early and late maturing bulls and steers. Every couple of days we must move the bulls to fresh pasture. Before this is done we take four grass cuttings from the new paddock and two cuttings from the old pasture.

We then weigh them out and place them in an oven of 98C and then weigh them again the next day to calculate the dry matter of each sample. We also calculate the grass cover on the site of the trial in order to calculate how much grass you have available for the cattle. We also get to assist in a bull puberty trial that is being conducted which sees us assisting in the electro ejaculation of dairy bull calves. This is done in order to analyse the semen collected and see if the bulls have reached puberty.

In between everything I have been doing at Grange, I was also selected as part of the Tipperary/Waterford Holstein Club team for the All-Ireland stock judging finals that took place at the IHFA National Holstein Friesian Open day last Wednesday. I was honoured to represent my local club at this prestigious event and I really enjoyed judging the cows on the day.

Not stopping there, I also was back on the summer show circuit at Clonmel show last Sunday, where we took home the Supreme Hereford Champion and the Reserve Aberdeen Angus Champion. Moving on from my adventures in the show ring, I have another few weeks left at Grange and I’m looking forward to taking part in some other research trails during the remainder of my time there.

Susan Dudley is a third year student, currently completely a degree in Agricultural Science in University College Dublin. As part of her studies, she must undertake a number of professional work placements over the course of 20 weeks. Read more of Susan's updates by clicking here.