Wednesday February 5, 2014

Day 46..

Theory morning - today we started off in the library as our timetable has reverted back to machinery all morning but the machinery teacher was unaware of this! However we then proceeded with another Lamma presentation - the group were discussing cultivators and drilling and showed us many different types of machinery used for preparing land for farming purposes - the most popular machinery being either a harrow or a plough. In the second half of the lesson we were visited by a gentleman from B&B Tractors, a local agricultural machinery specialist, to discuss in detail the trimble gps systems that they sell. The college has just purchased a trimble gps system and we were given a tutorial of how these devices work. Trimble gps systems utilise RTK - real time kinematic and require a base station to be erected for the three way signal to work correctly. Utilising RTK means that the system should work to within 0.02 meters of the required destination (a car sat nav system is usually to within 1 meter of destination!).

Practical afternoon - we started off this afternoon watching dom remove the supernumerary teats off the two new born Lincoln red calves. Supernumerary teats are any teats in excess of the normal four teats found on a cow’s udder. Supernumerary teats are most often removed when a calf is dehorned (early in life) because they can predispose the cow to mastitis, interfere with milking and are considered unsightly. This was carried out by simply cutting them off with a pair of round ended scissors and then spraying the area with terramycin spray - to stop any infection. Following a delay in proceedings we then learnt about the movement records for sheep - as 10 gimmers had just been sold today. We were given the information about the sale and could use this to fill in a replica movement record. There are four copies - 1 to keep, and the rest to be sent with the animals. The remaining copies then get sent to the right authorities (one retained by the new keeper - unless sent to slaughter). We then looked into a feeding task for a number of cows being fed silage and needed to work out if we had enough feed! Basic maths revision but a good exercise!