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The cows, the soil, the grass and the fertiliser are all being monitored together at the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) in Hillsborough, Co Down, for high precision grassland management.
The 2019 AGM of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists took place at the farm last week and precision grassland management was one of a number of areas covered.
Connected landscape
“It’s about creating that connected landscape to really get us into high precision grassland management.
“We’re trying to understand exactly what’s happening at the animal level, the soil level, the sward level – how all these things interact,” programme leader of sustainable livestock production at AFBI Steven Morrisson said.
Some 78ha of grassland at Hillsborough are under this “connected landscape”, with 35ha under the milking platform.
We’re connecting up all the sensors so that we know in real time what animals are doing
The cows grazing outdoors are fitted with rumination collars and leg sensors.
The data is taken from the collars and sensors and it is beamed at one of a number of towers on the farm.
“There are a number of towers dotted around the farm which are like relay stations, almost like wifi on the farm.
“What we’re doing with that is we’re connecting up all the sensors so that we know in real time what animals are doing and how they’re interacting with the sward.”
The leg sensors tell what direction cows are moving, when they get up and how often they move.
Meanwhile, the collars relay if the animal is grazing, if it is ruminating, if it is drinking and if it is doing nothing.
Soil
“We’re connecting those up, but we’re also connecting them up to the soil.
"There are soil sensors built in to all these platforms monitoring soil moisture and soil temperatures.
“We have normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) mounted sensors in the paddocks and we’ve also got some sensors mounted on the drones,” he said.
The farm has two drones. The bigger drone has a hyperspectral scanner. This essentially can measure overall plant health, diseases and water stress, or lack of, in crops.
“Some of that is mapped up to satellites. It tells us what grass is available in each paddock.
"So what we’re doing with that is ground-truthing it,” Morrission said.
The AFBI is looking at how accurate and precise this scanning is and if it is useful enough to give farmers information.
Fertiliser and grass measuring
After the cows and soil comes fertiliser monitoring. The farm is trialling GPS-based nutrient applications.
Morrisson said that they know exactly where to put the nutrients and what type of nutrients are needed on to paddock areas.
This includes a GPS fertiliser spreader and a slurry spreader with a built-in lab measuring the quality of slurry deposited in any location.
The farm also has a laser scanner which scans paddocks and measures grass.
“One of the difficulties with the plate meter system is the time and labour required to walk around all your paddocks, it’s a constant complaint.
“With this one, you just hook it up behind your quad or ATV and it just scans X thousand times across your paddock and gives you a prediction.”
Concentrate feed system
PhD students at AFBI are also trialling a concentrate feed system developed by AFBI where young stock can go into a creep-feeder for concentrates.
The feeder weighs them, checks water intake and then allocates feed out of one of four bins.
“What generally happens is that young stock go out to the paddocks and there’s a limited ability to precision-control what they’re being offered.
“We know we’ll have to supplement at certain times of the year with weather patterns, grass availability, soil conditions, etc.
"This allows us to ask what the benefits of precision feeding are for that animal, accounting for weather, soil and grass quality.
“There are four bins with four different types of feed. Inside it [we can] feed trace elements, micro-nutrients, probiotics, all that type of material [if needed],” Morrisson said.
All the animals are EID tagged and the plan is to be able to predict ahead of time when animals should be supplemented in order to minimise nutrient loss but maximise animal performance, with a view to expanding it to the beef herd.
End result
“All this equipment creates an awful lot of data. So what happens is at the minute we’re constantly building up a way of overlapping all of these data streams,” he said.
As an end result, the farmer will be able to look at each cow, see what they milked that day, how they moved, what they ate, what paddocks need fertiliser and so on.
“It’s all about integration," Morrisson said.
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