FCTV Arloesedd / Innovation
[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] a hospital [Music] [Music] [Music] the organic [Music] i'm robert jones and this is a louis calling farm um penrose raglan um it's a 180 cow herd um paddock grazed and also fed as well we were interested in the project partly because we have quite a lot of clover in the grassland and the sprays and herbicides for the clover use are more limited than they are on just grassland so um it appealed that that electrocuted them if that's the right word might be a better option or might be another option for killing them and leaving the clover in there in a grassland i'm trevor from root wave we're partners in the eip project um we've come with the technology part of side of things um this is root wave pro so we take power from the generator um transform it up and then use electricity to kill the weeds so what we're doing is we're boiling the fluid in the plant which is destroying the cell structure going through the roots we're also joined today by kevin godfrey who is a weed scientist with adas kevin you're actively involved in running these trials can you tell us a bit about how it works and uh initial findings yeah sure so uh essentially it's part of a two-year trial at this farm uh we've got six different treatments that are laid out on plots at 10 meters in length and 2 meters width and then they're replicated three times so we've got a total of 18 plots the treatments involve an untreated a herbicide treatment and then various different amounts of electrical weeding treatments the first year results showed electric weeding repeated three times in the season is comparable to the herbicide treatments at one of the sites with those three treatments we begin in kind of mid to late april and then we will carry on treating every four to six weeks after to give the docks enough time to regenerate and to get a good kill from the electrical weeder ideally i could see this working in a situation where you have a grazing paddock grazed quite hard with the docks standing a proud in a weed wiper type situation or with a vision guided bit of equipment uh it's definitely something we'd be interested in using it depends on the cost of the equipment really and how it works my earliest um [Music] [Music] [Music] is foreign hi i'm sarah i work for pruex so we've been working with ocean here as part of a farming connect project we've got sensors installed in the shed here and also down in the muck shed so with the sensor units we're able to look at ammonia carbon dioxide humidity temperature in the sheds and then that sends data back to a lora1 gateway so we're analyzing that data we get data points every five minutes um so then back at our offices we're analyzing that and looking at how ammonia levels in particular are changing in the shed so pruex we apply non-infective beneficial bacteria into the sheds and what we've been looking at here is how that affects the ammonia so we've been able to dry up the bedding um so we're getting less ammonia emissions in the shed we're also looking at how that's affected in the storage shed as well in the muck store so we've got these sensors on commercial farms as well and the data that we get from this project will help us to continue to develop our work for other farms this is a sample of some of the litter um in ocean shed here so the sprayer units along the edge spray prux bacteria onto the litter and this is an example of what the litter looks like so usually we'd get quite wet moist capped litter and when we take swabs of that the bacteria we often find there are e coli or strep which put a lot of pressure on the bird's immune system but when we dry the litter out with the prux bacteria um this is what we're able to achieve so there's no putrid smell to it um we've taken the moisture out of it it's producing less ammonia and when we take bacterial swabs of it this is just dominated in pro-x bacteria which makes a healthier environment for the bird flies there is [Music] [Music] my [Music] get pulled pedro farms in seeing basically um 100 protocols and and sort of levels have regular cast silvasony uh see arrived within my castle where there are mighty uh repeat agony as well as a sort of effect through a castle or heaven so so so troy pope site might have do a ring sort of uh a faith through it so something positive well my costume um yes my name is ian rickman i farm here at gurnos near bethlehem san diego it's an upland sheep farm uh around 80 hectares we also have common grazing rights for the sheep on the black mountain um and we run a flock of about 400 ewes which um graze the hill as well as a down on the farm okay yeah well you mentioned the grazing rights to the black mountains there and i think that will lead us on nicely to talk about the project so um tell us briefly what the what the project is here um yeah so it's um a tracking collars project um so tracking livestock testing technology for tracking livestock locations um so there are six of us involved in the project um throughout wales uh on guy north wales four of us here on the black mountain and one guy in south wales so um the the farmers in north wales and south wales i've got the tracking collars on some cattle as well as sheep uh but here on the black mountain we've predominantly got the tr we've well all the tracking colours are on sheep it's cheap we're looking at um and we're testing the technology to find out how those how that information about the location of those animals where they are on a daily basis when they're on ill and what applications that can have to help us uh gathering sheep um from a conservation grazing point of view and hopefully it'll be a deterrent against theft as well because we have theft problems on the hill so what interested you uh firstly to take part in the project we're facing increasing problems grazing the hill um the reduction in livestock numbers up there gradually there's less flocks turning out to the hill so the sheep tend to spread out a lot more so gathering becomes more difficult um so we hope this would help with that we have issues up there with sheep theft we have in the past um she'd come we turned sheep up the hill they don't come back so we hope we could um the application with the collars would help with that um and as well as another part of it is to get that get some information on the grazing habits of the livestock so where are they grazing on the hill are they grazed preferring to graze this habitat more than that habitat so all that information um would be useful going forward we feel yeah yeah well it certainly sounds good in theory but um in terms of practically setting up has there been any well what's involved in in setting up the technology needed to to have these these callers and to start tracking them um it's been quite a challenge um for us especially on the mountain here because the the black mountain is is a vast area with lots of ups and downs and gullies and um so to get the coverage that we need for the for for the antennas which pick up the signal from the collars um has been quite a challenge um so we've been working with the guys in spain who provide the collars um and the antenna they can look remotely from their side on maps um and and show you where the coverage you'll get if you sighted antenna in a specific place would be on the hill um those antenna pick up the signal from the collar which is um around the sheep's neck the antenna picks up that signal um and it gives various information then via that antenna back to the guys in spain on location of the sheep how far it's moved in the last 24 hours if it's making unusual patterns of movement as well they can tell all that by their algorithms they've got out in spain to to to track the um data they get from the from the sheep yeah there's a there and that shows you where the sheep are um it'll also give you other information like um um ambient temperature how far the sheep has moved in the last 24 hours and it'll also show you the pattern of that movement and the more the more long-term data um is being collected by the guys in spain and we hope to look at that they'll be giving us a report later in the year on where those sheep have been grazing you know over the the three months four months whatever it is that they've been up on the hill it's a vast hill the sheep move about on the hill during the day uh so you can see now some the weather's not very nice some sheep have come down to the bottom of the hill for shelter they'll they'll have preferred areas where they graze on the hill at different times during the day um and different times during the year so that information of where the sheep are grazing and what habitats you know would we we rather see those sheep grazing a little bit more on that habitat than that than another one um and perhaps that information can be used going forward then uh touring help to increase the biodiversity on the hill i'm hillary kehoe um we're farming at the nissan near bethesda which is at the foot of the canelo mountains we've got 300 welsh mountain use and some manx lockton used that we use for close shepherding and we've got 25 beef suckler cows and we grow graze those across north wales from patelli to angle sea to flamvovachan looking after nature reserves and promoting good grasslands and doing habitat management so hillary we're here at garc uh and this is uh part of the grazing work you're carrying up for the north wales wildlife trust um so what interested you firstly in looking into this technology trying to track your cattle well i work for pond pottery national thrifted the grazing organization for wales and it's really interesting to to find out about different sorts of technology that can help people get grazing on habitat land for wildlife benefit and also in my role with the nature for any farming network uh in wales it's really good to be able to sort of show farmers lead by example and see what is possible um if you lose a cow here it's taken four people two days to find a lost cow and calf before now and we we just found them under a tree but they were all lost in the the fence edge and the phragmites so nowadays i can just look on my phone and see on the app where where they are and go to the right place and find them yeah yeah and then with the app so can you set up kind of alert systems if they go into an area you particularly don't want them to to graze or if they go close to a road i know there's a road going through through here yep so this is an 80 hectare site and we graze it in compartments but until recently the fencing's been not amazing around here and they can get onto the road and they can get into slamberg we've had them in there before now and um they can inadvertently go in people's gardens as well so we set the boundary of the plot that they're in on the phone and then we get an email message to let us know when they've when they've crossed the boundary and that has already i think that's happened twice and it takes me half an hour to get here from home and i've got here in time before they go and visit the children in san bernardino school it's just going to be really valuable as a tool to giving people the confidence so i check them twice a week and we have dog walkers who come and check them but i could if i'd get an alert if one was still for more than four or five hours and then i'd know i had i had to come out and check it so things like that give somebody the confidence to put the stock out yeah and what stuff have you have you learned so far uh in terms of what kind of habitats they like to to graze is it does it differ throughout the grazing season or they they spend a lot of time when they're on this piece of the fan they they've been focusing on on the area behind me here yeah you can see how they've they've only been on here about two weeks and they've eaten all the millennia and the grassy stuff but they wander up through the fence edge every day and they'll be making routes through that and trampling it down and browsing it a bit so you know they will be doing that good they they like to stand in trees when it's really hot obviously yeah and you do know that anyway but yeah we've got proof now the weather benefits foreign [Music] you
2021-09-13 00:47
