Range of enterprises on Harper Adams farm

Harper Adams University hosted representatives from the Irish agriculture and education sectors in late February. Peter McCann reports.

Peter McCann

9 March 2016

Range of enterprises on Harper Adams farm

The 390 dairy cows on the Harper Adams dairy unit are housed in two separate sheds.

Cows on nutritional trials have a neck transponder that only allows them to access assigned feeding units in the dairy shed.

The sheep unit on campus has 200 Suffolk Mule cross ewes lambed to the Texel ram.

Farm manager Richard Hooper speaking to visitors to Harper Adams University last month.

Soil Hall is a shed designed to allow cultivation equipment to be tested all year round.

Harper Adams University has around 4,000 students enrolled in courses at present.

The 390 dairy cows on the Harper Adams dairy unit are housed in two separate sheds.

The college farm at Harper Adams University in Shropshire, England, is 640ha in size and is located around the university campus. Approximately 4,000 students are enrolled at Harper Adams with approximately one third studying agriculture courses.Deputy vice-chancellor Prof Peter Mills told visitors from the Irish agriculture and education sectors who visited at the end of February that the university was the largest agriculture facility in the UK.

Deputy vice-chancellor Prof Peter Mills told visitors from the Irish agriculture and education sectors who visited at the end of February that the university was the largest agriculture facility in the UK.

The college farm is used for teaching, as well as for research for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and commercial research projects for private companies.

It includes a 390-cow dairy unit. Cows are calving all year round with milk supplied to Tesco through Müller Wiseman Dairies. Currently, 348 cows are being milked in the 40-point internal rotary parlour.

The herd is mostly Holstein bred and yielding 9,700 litres per cow on a total mixed ration of maize silage, lucerne and 6kg of blend.

Last summer high yielders were kept indoors, with low yielders out at grass by day, but staff hope to get more cows out to grass this year.

Other enterprises

The pig unit on the farm has 230 Landrace Large White cross sows farrowing in three-week cycles in a birth-to-bacon system, while 90 dairy-bred cattle are finished on the college’s beef unit each year.

Calves come on to the unit in two batches in the autumn and early spring.

Poultry nutrition research is also carried out on campus at the National Institute of Poultry Husbandry, while a flock of 200 Suffolk Mule cross ewes on the campus were heat-synchronised and lambed to the Texel ram at the end of February.

Harper Adams has continued to see a significant number of Irish students enrol in courses at the university. In the 2015/16 academic year, 32 students from NI and 11 students from the Republic of Ireland began studies at Harper.

Studying at Harper involves significant cost given that tuition fees are £9,000 per year and other costs such as accommodation, living expenses and travel also have to be met.

First-year agriculture student, and incoming chairman of Harper Ireland, Philip Gillespie said that he viewed the tuition fee costs as an investment in his future career.