“Are cow collars worth the hype?” was the question posed by three friends in transition year at Ballymahon Vocational School, Co. Longford, for their entry in the 60th BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition this week.
Grace Cassells, Keira Hopkins and Lára Flood all come from farming backgrounds. Grace is from a dairy and beef farm just outside Ballymahon, Keira comes from a sheep and beef farm, and Lara is from a sheep, beef and dairy farm.
“We are all 16 years-of-age, and from a very young age, we have always had a love for farming,” said Grace.
“The aim of our project is to see if cow collars benefit dairy farmers by reducing labour and improving cows’ health and well-being.
“We decided to enter our project into the BT Young Scientist competition, because we know that there is a lot of labour on Irish dairy farms.
“The age profile of the Irish farmer is also increasing, and therefore any extra help is greatly welcomed. We were very intrigued as to the benefits of cow collars, and wanted to get a greater understanding first-hand of what farmers thought of these devices,” said the Ballymahon student.
“As Irish dairy farming is a grass-based pasture system unlike many other countries, this can bring many benefits as well as many challenges to Irish farmers.
“As I myself come from a dairy and beef farm, herd health and well-being are most important. We invested in cow collars last year, and are seeing first-hand how these can be very beneficial for the farmer, but we wanted to see was this just on our farm, or do other farmers think that this system is beneficial and worth the investment,” she added.
Farmer surveys
The trio decided to devise two different surveys: “The first survey we created was for farmers that are using cow collars on their farm. The second survey was for farmers that don’t use cow collars on their farm.
“We asked farmers many different questions to try and get a greater understanding on how they felt about labour, fertility and how the overall health of the herd is.
“These surveys were very accessible, as they were completed online. Therefore, we got results from many farmers across the country. We want to thank all of these farmers for taking the time to fill out our surveys and contributing to our project results,” said Grace.
As well as this, the three students approached companies that sell cow collars to discuss their products further: “All companies were very accommodating and helped us out greatly, Censortec and Lely especially.
“They gave us sample collars for display in the RDS. Censortec then put us in contact with customers that use their products, and Lely set us up on their app that links to the collars so that we could also show the app up in the RDS.
“We got in contact with Censortec’s customers and met them on their farms. We got to see first-hand how they operate their system and got these farmers’ opinions on these cow collars from their experience with them.
“We would like to thank all the businesses and farmers that we visited and had discussions with. Throughout this journey during the project, we also had to make a diary and booklet to keep track of our progress and to show the results.
“We really enjoyed talking to many people about our project and building relationships with many different companies and farmers,” said Grace.
“If we were to redo this project, we would love to complete our research on an even larger scale. We are very passionate about new technologies coming into farming to make farmers lives easier and more efficient,” the student added.
“We would love to further our research on these products, and also research other technologies that are becoming popular on the market for farms.
“We want to give farmers as much information and research on these new products, so that they can make decisions on what’s best going forward on their farms to increase efficiency and reduce labour,” the Ballymahon student said.
Grace would love to further her knowledge and research in the agricultural sector. Keira is hoping to pursue a career in veterinary medicine, while Lára is keen to follow a career in the agricultural sector also.