Foyle Food Group’s ‘Farms of Excellence’ in Co. Tyrone has partnered with a Norwegian-based agri-tech company in a new hill-farm grazing trial.
The trial is set to examine how ‘virtual fencing’ can optimise the grazing management of a suckler herd in a hill farm setting.
Speaking to Agriland, Foyle Food Group’s Andrew Clarke explained what the research hopes to achieve.
He explained that the project is being initially trialled on 26 cows and a breeding bull. No collars are placed on the calves.
The trial will examine how effective the virtual fencing is in the hill landscape where phone signal is poor.
Initial indications are showing the virtual fence is effective despite the low signal in the region and the farm has plans to expand the project to more cattle in the near future.
Clarke added that the ‘virtual fence’ is essentially a collar that is placed on the livestock. A phone app shows the farmer where the cattle are located.
“I’m sitting here in the office and if I want to give the cattle grazing on the hill a fresh area to graze, I can use the technology to create a bigger grazing zone for the cattle to make their way into.
“It’s free entry for the cattle to get into the zone but once they try to go out of the zone they hear a noise and they get that noise three times and then it goes to a shock.
“There’s a solar panel on the collars. They’re charged up at the start of the year and the solar panel will keep them charged for the rest of the season.
“The phone app will tell you what each collar battery is and if you have a collar not working or the battery’s not charging, it will let you know,” he outlined.
The collars were fitted last week and have been “working well” on the herd so far, according to the Foyle representative.
Clarke said: “There’s two reasons we wanted to trial the collars. Firstly, we want to better manage the grazing of the cattle on the hill.
“We want to bring the cattle to graze areas of the hill where they wouldn’t normally go as a group.
“Secondly, whenever we’re serving cows with a bull on the hill, sometimes the cows could be on one end of the hill and the bull could be on the other. The cow could be cycling and the bull would never see her within 24 hours.
“The aim of the virtual fencing is to keep the livestock batched and moved across the hill. We hope to be able to basically rotationally graze the hill. That’s what were trying to achieve.”
The Norwegian-based company involved in the trial with Foyle is ‘Monil’.
According to their website, Monil is “a startup [business] challenging traditional fences with our innovative virtual fencing technology, allowing animals to roam freely while giving farmers complete control over their herd’s location and well-being”.
Foyle farm
Foyle Food Group’s ‘Farms of Excellence’ is located in Co. Tyrone and the overall farming operation encompasses 1,100ac of land. 570ac of this is mountain-type ground, 250ac is lowland grazing and the rest is lowland silage ground.
The farm is continuously conducting research and trials with the aim of providing practical and up-to-date information to Foyle’s beef suppliers on ways to further improve the economic and environmental sustainability of their farms.
Some of the areas on which the farm is currently conducting research includes best practice on grassland management, soil health, animal nutrition, and bedding for livestock.
More information on the farm can be found here.