This Sunday saw the culmination of Rode Heath Primary’s involvement with a national farming and engineering campaign when a group of Year 5 children were seen presenting their inventions for calf well-being to Adam Hanson and his team.
It all started back in January this year when we were invited to the Lancashire Farm Education Centre in Croston to meet Elaine Smith, who runs a working dairy farm. The visit was precipitated by our work with the NFU and University of Manchester – carrying out some of the activities from this year’s Education Educates Farmvention Challenge which focused on how agricultural engineers work with farmers to help solve the big issues challenging UK farming communities.
Giving a context to learning
Home Farm was an idea location to choose as it provided examples of how technology is being used to make dairy farming more efficient, by automating many of the normally time-consuming processes, such as feeding and cleaning. The cows are housed indoors in a large well-ventilated shed and are milked robotically whenever they choose to enter the automated milking machine. The cows’ well-being is paramount and this is reflected in the layout of the barn and wealth of data gathered to give up to the minute information about their dietary needs and general health.
Our vision at Rode Heath has always been to make our learning as context rich as possible, so experiencing the day to day running of a farm at first hand and being able to ask questions of real practioners gave the pupils a real understanding of the tasks – one of which had been to observe the natural behaviour of dairy cows and design a suitable environment based on their experiences.
“Whilst were there we made a tally of how the cows behaved so that we know what they like doing and what they don’t do so often. We found that more than anything cows like to sleep and rest and eat. The calves like to play, but the cows don’t. The cows have big electric brushes that spin when the cows push them. The cows favourite place to scratch is behind their ears and on their bum!”
Making knowledge ‘sticky’
The children were fascinated by both the cows and the technology. It was amazing how much information they retained from the day.
These are just a few of the facts that intrigued them:
cows can go upstairs but not down
cows wear chains on their legs when they have just given birth or they could slip and dislocate their hips
it doesn’t hurt cows when they get milked
you can tell how pregnant a cow is by how far back their udders are
cows like calm music
to know if a cow is pregnant a vet has to stick their hand up it’s bum!
cows like scratches behind their ears and bum!
cow tongues are like sand paper
farmers can check on a cow wherever they are in the world as long as they have Internet connection
there is a machine called the crusher that helps you keep the cow still when you are trying to figure out where the cow is hurting
the NFU (National Farmers Union) cares for most farmers in England
cow food smells nice
you only have to have 1 bull on a dairy farm
The visit ended with Adam setting a challenge for the children to design a life-sized prototype of a product that would help improve the well-being of the cows.
We certainly had our work cut out.
Imagining & Planning
Back at school, the children shared their experiences and set about coming up with ideas.
There were many suggestions: heated leg warmers, a calf playground, treat balls, cold mattresses, water scratchers – to name but a few.
Finally, the class decided on developing a heated calf-jacket – both a hot and cold version. They used their knowledge of existing products – such as heated gilets for people and horse fly rugs – to come up with a jacket that was covered with a zebra print to ward off flies; had memory foam across the calf’s withers for comfort and incorporated a series of heated pad inside the lining.
The cool version had pockets into which icepacks could be inserted – an idea that the farmer Elaine actually thought was very marketable. Thank you Mrs Hulse for helping us with all that sewing.
Creating a Prototype
The children even had a go at programming a Micro:bit to measure the calf’s temperature and how often it stood up and down.
Fit for a calf
At the beginning of May we were invited back to Home Farm to present our ideas. The children were so excited – would the jackets fit? Would the calves like them? Would they even allow them to be put on?
If you watched Countryfile on Sunday you will know that they were a great success.
It was an amazing experience for all and just one of the innovative projects that we have worked on at Rode Heath Primary. Thank you to everyone who helped us in our endeavours, particularly DeLaval and WeatherBeeta, who provided us with example coats.
If you didn’t manage to catch the programme, you can watch the 2 minute clip here:
Think Like An Engineer 