By Heather Hughes and Heather Cromie, CREAM Finance and Promotion team , CAFRE, Greenmount Campus

CAFRE programmes aim to produce applied and practical graduates. The Enterprise Management module in both the Higher National Diploma in Agriculture and Agricultural Technology degree gives the students hands on practical experience in running a high input high out put dairy herd (CREAMherd).

This years CREAMstudents started the academic year with a visit to United Dairy Farmers laboratories at Pennybridge Industrial Estate, hosted by Mr Brian Hunter. During this visit the students learned the importance of good hygiene, proper sterilization, storage and testing of milk produced from dairy herds across Northern Ireland.

The students were given the opportunity to observe new technologies involved in the testing of each individual milk sample received from individual farms. This included the Bactoscanner which is currently used for testing the hygienic quality of milk samples (replacing the old TBC method). Through the use of this new technology farmers supplying milk to United Dairy Farmers are able to receive an immediate result for milk hygiene as the scanner counts live cells in each sample.

During the visit Mr Hunter also demonstrated the extensive range of data that can be obtained from the new web based milk recording statistical package. During this Mr Hunter commended the students on the level of care taken to maintain a consistently low somatic cell count of 84 and Bactoscan of 17 (rolling averages).

The CREAMherd is currently yielding 10,157 KG milk at 3.85 percent butter fat, 3.03 percent protein on 3.5 tonnes of meal.

Brian Hunter, United Dairy Farmers, discussing the new Bactoscan method of hygienic milk quality with CAFRE’s CREAM students.

Heather Hughes (Keady) and Heather Cromie (Banbridge), HND 1 students in this years CREAM Finance and Promotion Team