This week, father-and-son team, Tom and Simon Browne from Killeagh in southeast Cork installed an underpass to make access from their main grazing block to an out-farm across a road for their large dairy herd.

The Browne family installed a Corbett Concrete underpass, which will make moving a grazing group of over 400 cows much easier and safer across a regional road. The land across the road is owned by the Brownes and was used for silage predominantly in the past. The road was closed last Tuesday and the concrete culverts were laid on Wednesday. On Thursday morning, the road was tarred and open for traffic by lunchtime.

The builder, John Mulcahy from Cork, said a 130t crane was used to lift the 12 concrete culverts (each culvert weighs 11.5t) into position. The culverts were laid back to back, creating two passageways.

Each culvert is 3m wide and 2.1m high and they all fit into each other. Precast walls were erected on top of the culverts before the road was finished off. More retaining walls will be erected at the clay banks leading into the underpass and it will also be fenced.

Roadways have already been laid, leading close to and from the underpass. This means very little work is required to have it ready for cows to cross next week.

A full report of the new underpass will be covered in the farm buildings section of the Irish Farmers Journal in the coming weeks.

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