Longford students win Farm Sustainability Award at BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition

Three friends in Transition Year at Ballymahon Vocational School, Grace Cassells, Keira Hopkins and Lára Flood, were announced as the winners of the prestigious ABP Farm Sustainability Award at the 60th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) in the RDS. 

Grace, Keira and Lára all come from farming backgrounds and in addition to winning the ABP Farm Sustainability Award, their project entitled ‘Are cow collars worth the hype?’, was also bestowed with a Highly Commended Award. 

The three sixteen year olds have always had a love for farming and they were thrilled with their BTYSTE success. 

The aim of their project, ‘Are cow collars worth the hype?’, is to see if cow collars benefit dairy farmers by reducing labour and improving cow’s health and well-being.

Grace explained, “We decided to enter our project into the BT Young Scientist competition because we know that there is a lot of labour on Irish dairy farms, the age profile of the Irish farmer is also increasing and therefore any extra help is greatly welcomed. We were very intrigued as to the benefits of cow collars and wanted to get a greater understanding first hand of what farmers thought of these devices, where they ‘worth the hype?’” 

As Irish dairy farming is a grass based pasture system unlike many other countries this can bring many benefits as well as many challenges to Irish farmers. 

Grace added, “As I myself come from a dairy and beef farm, herd health and well-being are most important. We invested in cow collars last year and are seeing first-hand how these can be very beneficial for the farmer, but we wanted to see if this is only on our farm or do other farms think that this system is beneficial and worth the investment.”

The girls created two different surveys. 

The first survey was for farmers that are using cow collars on their farm, the second survey was for farmers that don’t use cow collars on their farm. They asked farmers many different questions to try and get a greater understanding on how they felt about labour, fertility and how the overall health of the herd is. The surveys were very accessible as they were completed online, therefore they got results from many farmers across the country. 

The girls also approached companies who sell cow collars to discuss their products further. Grace said, “All companies were very accommodating and helped us out greatly, Censortec and Lely especially. They gave us sample collars that we displayed in the RDS. Censortec then put us in contact with customers that use their products and Lely set us up on their app that links to the collars so that we could also show the app up in the RDS. We got in contact with Censortec’s customers and met them on their farms. We got to see first-hand how they operate their system and got these farmers' opinions on these cow collars from their experience with them.”

Throughout their project journey, the girls also had to make a diary and booklet to keep track of their progress and to show the results. They also made a poster that was displayed in the RDS at their stand that shows the results and a summary of the project.

Grace concluded, “We really enjoyed talking to many people about our project and building relationships with many different companies and farmers.

“If we were to redo this project, we would love to complete our research on an even larger scale. We are very passionate about new technologies coming into farming to make farmers life’s easier and more efficient.”

Also check out this short video HERE