The 2023 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) opened to the public today (Thursday, January 12) at the RDS in Dublin with many agriculture-focused projects and studies on display.
One such project, carried out by Ronan Moloney and Paddy Canniffe of Kinsale Community School in Co. Cork, aimed to evaluate the most efficient strategies for the feeding of Friesian bull calves.
The boys concluded that their investigations were a success after they discovered a way to save 9hrs/wk by adapting a once-a-day feeding system.
They ran their experiment, which consisted of taking 20 Friesian calves and splitting them into two groups, for six weeks.
One of these groups was being fed milk replacer once a day, and the other group was being fed milk replacer twice a day. The boys explained that they expected the group that was being fed milk replacer twice a day to be heavier.
“However, the group that was being fed milk replacer once a day made up for it in dry feed. So they were actually both the same, which were happy with,” Ronan told Agriland.
As a result, their project concluded that a saving of nine labour hours/week was achieved when the experiment was scaled up to a 100-cow herd.
Safety in the agriculture industry
Paddy Canniffe cited the “big concern” of the prevalence of workplace accidents in the agriculture industry as the inspiration for adapting a strategy that would save farmers time and allow them to have “more opportunity to rest, which should improve farm safety“.
“The agricultural industry is the most dangerous in Ireland and the UK and we wanted to lower the workload because if a farmer is stressed and fatigued from being overworked, they’re more likely to have an accident,” he said.
“We also wanted to see if it would improve sustainability and lower the carbon.
“Our results also showed that with our once-a-day feeding system, there was a lower cost/kg weight gain and a lower carbon footprint, therefore giving the farmer a lower cost and a more sustainable method of feeding calves.”
Pinkeye in cattle
Another project on display at the exhibition today was that of Stephen Hurley from Schull Community College in Co. Cork.
Hurley carried out an investigation into the connection between pinkeye in cattle and the wrapping on silage bales.
He carried out the experiment on his grandfather’s farm, where he swabbed bales for bacteria both immediately after unwrapping them and then again 12 hours later, to study the difference in bacteria presence.
Hurley found that the amount of bacteria present after the 12 hours was significantly lower than when the wrapping is first taken off.
“The results which I got from the LB agar plates show me that by the bales being opened for a 12-hour period, the bacteria either dies off or disperses out of the bales to lessen the number of colonies of bacteria in the silage,” he said.
“This possibly lowers the chance of the cattle getting infected with pinkeye compared to if they were fed the bale when it was only just taken out of the wrapping.”
Hurley said that it would be of benefit to farmers to start testing their silage bales for bacteria so they can prevent it spreading to their cattle.
“This could be a good thing for Irish farms as testing the bales may be of benefit to reduce the occurrence of pinkeye which will reduce the farm workload,” he said.