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?’”
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