Our Agriculture students are increasingly given more opportunities to interact with the public and develop a strong understanding of the industry that they are being trained in.

This month the students talk about some of the engagement they have experienced with the industry that we have planned for them. These give the students a much more realistic experience of the industry, but also because it is important to see in action and talk to industry experts, they will benefit from these experiences as it equips the students for further work experience and career opportunities.

Ben Roberts

This month on Rodway farm has been an extremely busy one, with almost all the sheep lambing within the first 3 weeks. Our practical lessons mainly consist of ringing, numbering and tagging the lambs so they can be let out of the individual pen, and letting ewes and lambs out in the field. We now have over 100 couples out in the field which they are very happy with as we have lots of grass for this time of year.

In the next couple of weeks we are looking to start field work to plant out spring crops that include Spring Barley and Lucerne and then will turn to Maize planting. All of the Maize planting will be done by the Rodway Young farmers (the young farmers here, run by college students). It’s going to be done in the event 24hr cultivations, where we have 24hrs to create a seedbed on the 90 acres that we have available. It’s all for charity and all money raised goes to Cancer research and RABI.

One way we raised money was to fill a tractor with balloons and let people guess how many were in there. The prize was a model New Holland tractor, kindly donated by Hawkins Agri. In the end we filled the tractor with every balloon we had and ended up with 238 and the prize was won with the closest guess of 235 balloons. We raised nearly £150 for our two charities.

Adrian Netherway

This month the lambing at the farm is starting to come to an end with a large majority of Ewes and Lambs gone out to grass, now that the grass has started to pick up after its application of fertiliser. The Lambing fun day was a success for the grass to maize charity event, along with all the other success on the day.

Every week we have an outside speaker come into the college to show us what they do and the job opportunities that could potentially be available to us once we have completed our two year course. One of the talks that most stuck out to me this month was one by Kelvin Cave LTD. This talk was purely based on the importance of the reliable way to preserve your most valuable crop. This was based around all forage crops such as grass, maize and whole crop, with information on the making and the storage of the crop including what can be done to improve the results to enable profitability for the end product. The students really appreciate and benefit from these talks.

Annabella Cornish

This month we paid a visit to a 275 cow, pasture based, dairy farm in Somerset. The farm held a mixture of small cows including Jersey crosses, Friesians and Ayrshire cows. As we were walking around this farm it was clear that it was hugely different to the usual dairy farm in this region.

The farm followed a strict block calving system of 13 weeks starting in February and this time period is still being tightened year by year. To compare this with the college farm at Rodway, which holds 250 high yielding Holsteins, saw some outstanding differences including milk yield, milk quality and cow health and temperament but the most interesting changing factor for me was the difference in capital investment put into the feeding system.

The farm we visited was a low input system of all year round paddock grazing with in parlour feed and available silage for the slower growing months of the year, there is very minimal work put into the land meaning milk production is made more self-sufficient. This has made me realise that there is a huge range of different but successful ways of running an efficient dairy unit.

Michelle Parish

During the last month at College the farm have started lambing. As a supervisor over the first years I was put on an 8 hour shift to ensure that the sheep were checked regularly and any problems within the lambing shed were attended. My shift was midnight to 8.30am.

We encountered just one problem lambing during the night which me and the other students solved with our lambing skills and knowledge on how to address the situation. By assisting the lambing we delivered healthy twins which will now grow successfully.

Also I visited James Winslade Beef Farm where he showed us around and discussed the problems with the flooding last year and how it affected his family business. He has a beef herd of around 500 and produces his own stock from his suckler herd along side a few brought in. Mr Winslade is successful with his beef farm and has a very good system.

This article is part of a monthly column written by Agriculture students at Bridgwater College. You can read the other articles in this series here: January, February, April, May, June