Campus to Countryside: Brinsbury College Puts Cutting-Edge Farming on Show

Local farmers and former students joined staff at Brinsbury College for an engaging farm open day showcasing its latest cutting-edge technology and new facilities.

The well-attended event held at Stable Barn Farm, was organised in partnership with LKL Services who work with the college as a training provider.

Guests were invited on a guided walk around the farm and to talks on herd health, technology and welfare and wellbeing in the industry. And the event was rounded off with a barbecue held under the canopy of the spacious, new, cattle shed.

The college was awarded more than £1million to overhaul and refurbish facilities to support  the delivery of agricultural T Levels. Last year, the college’s dairy herd moved into the new cattle shed, enabling the cows to be loose housed with plenty of ventilation which promotes airflow.

The investment included a new handling facility, equipped with the latest technology which scans the cow’s microchips to monitor their health more accurately, as well as camera technology which enables body conditioning scanning.

Farm Manager, Ben Penfold said: “Today was about promoting the farm, showing what we do, showing the new technologies that we’re bringing into the farm, the Herdvision, the mono sensors, and just really showing off the new building that we have, a lot of money spent on, all the upgrades, and just trying to show the local farmers how we’re trying to train students to go out into the industry and work for them.

“A lot of the local farmers, they’ve heard about the new farm being built, they’ve heard rumours about the technology. So, it was an opportunity for them to actually come in, see it with their own eyes and get to talk to us how we’re working.

“It’s also for us to have a chat with them. I want to ask the farmers what they need from students so that we can start looking into that – if they need to learn technology more or if they need to learn tractor driving more, than we can adjust how we do our work experience days and try and promote that a bit more to help the farmers.”

Regional Manager for LKL Services, James Picot, said: “I just wanted to bring people together. I do want to promote the college because they are the source of young people coming into the industry – so I did want to showcase the college.

“We were able to have the technical presentations about technology that’s sort of pretty new in farming, and we also had Andrew Greener from Gallantium talking about welfare and wellbeing which I think is awesome, and with that mixture of farmers, students, ex-students, people working on farms, that really good mixture of people to sort of put that to.

“And we rounded it off with a nice barbecue where everyone goes home well-fed and watered and feeling that they’ve had a nice day.”

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