The College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) has partnered with the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) to plan a dairy calf-rearing open day on Thursday, January 19.
The first tour on the day will commence at 10.30a.m at CAFRE’s Dairy Centre on its Greenmount Campus in Co. Antrim, and there will be a tour every 30 minutes thereafter. The last tour will leave at 12.30p.m.
The aim of the event is to provide opportunities to view the design and construction of calf-rearing facilities at CAFRE’s Greenmount Campus.
The college said the tours will provide those who attend with the opportunity to hear first-hand, the journey from managing the cow in the lead up to and point of calving, the management of the new-born calf and the calf-rearing system.
Staff from Greenmount Campus will share performance data of the calves within the system with attendants.
A spokesperson for CAFRE said: “The event will demonstrate a number of management strategies relating to health, welfare and labour efficiency in relation to dairy-bred calf rearing.
“This includes the open building design, feed preparation/cleaning area, automated feeding and the associated performance data from this system.”
Researchers from AFBI will be discussing the findings of the opti-house project that has investigated the main factors affecting the efficiency and effectiveness of calf housing.
The tour will end with a visit to the campus’ milking parlour to view and discuss the energy saving technologies that CAFRE employs within the unit.
Registration for the event can be done on CAFRE’s website and those who wish to attend can register up until the day of the event.