Wednesday February 12, 2014

Day 49..

We had a surprise trip today to the farm yard of H Broadberry & Son where we met Dean Broadberry (the son part) who talked us through his farming operation. The company is an agricultural contractors, farmers of 950 acres and contract grain drying and storage facility. There was some pretty decent kit around the farm, but dean explained how he is no longer following the traditional ploughing and seedbed preparation methods, he now successfully utilises a min till program - minimum tillage. Consequently, there was not much machinery, but what was there was all singing all dancing - take the sprayer for example, £176,000 worth of self propelled, gps guided, self censoring, 30 metre boomed machinery!!! After a very detailed and interesting talk we were taken to the farm workshop so that we could carry out a risk assessment in a real life situation. This was a working farm, and the workshop reflected this - full of tools, work benches, parts, gadgets and essential gear, such as the oar compressor unit! We conducted our risk assessments, which have been handed in to be marked as part of our agricultural learning.

This afternoon it was our task to vaccinate the first set of lambing ewes with heptavac P - a  subcutaneous injection (administered into the fatty layer f tissue under the skin). Ewes are vaccinated during pregnancy to help reduce the threat of clostridial diseases such as lamb dysentery, pulpy kidney, tetanus, and pasteurellosis in their lambs provided the lambs receive sufficient immune colostrum during the first 1-2 days of life. We set up the race and handling system and herded the sheep into a holding pen before each having a go at injecting the sheep. As the sheep are really woolly at the moment, it was hard to pinch a good bit of neck skin and inject into the bottom of this, however, a good it is to learn how to feel where the needle should go as the more sheep you have to inject the quicker you need to be at this task. Most f the ewes looked really well, with nice fat tummies, so hopefully they will go on to produce a good number of healthy lambs. Once the lambing sheds are prepared these ewes will be brought in out of the awful winters rain and wind for a nicer lambing environment.