– by C. Morgan-Davies (SRUC) V. Giovannetti, M. Acciaro, M. Decandia and A. Frongia (AGRIS)
After TechCare held its last annual meeting in Alghero, Sardinia, on the 4th and 5th of February 2025, the AGRIS partners (Valeria Giovannetti, Marco Acciaro, Mauro Decandia, Andrea Frongia) organised visits to four dairy and goats farms, where some of the technology retained by the project had been piloted, showcased or discussed.
The first visit on the 6th of February was to the dairy sheep and goats farm of Giuseppe Ena, in Mores. The farm had 400 goats Saanen, 200 sheep Sarda on 80 ha. Giuseppe’s system is intensive, with the goats inside but free to roam outside the shed. After being part of several projects highlighting the use of technologies, he got the impetus to change his system and reduce his workload, especially around feeding the animals. His goats are now split in 3 groups and fed accordingly. He is still doing 2 milking a day, but his labour costs have decreased by rationalising his management. His next move is to focus on genetics for his herd.
Giuseppe Ena farm
The second visit was to the farm of Pietro & Andrea Scanu in Tula. The farm is using more technologies on the management. They have 100 ha, 800 goats and 400 sheep. Most of the food is home produced. Whilst the sheep are still seasonal, the goats are kidding all year round. They are using the services of a veterinary company and focus on embryo transfer and AI for high genetic gain. They carry out male evaluation, and transrectal ultrasound to improve the herd. All kids are fed artificially. They use EID reader in the milking parlour to identify the animals individually for their milk production. The also have a mix wagon for feeding and use portable NIR to analyse their forage. They also have a ventilation system in their shed, for heat stress. They also have less ammonia, flies and birds with this system.
Pietro Scanu farm: group photo
The third visit was to the research farm of the university of Sassari. Dr Antonello Canna welcomed us with his team and showed us their EID automatic feed bins (from Biocontrol), set up for up to 60 ewes, and their methane chambers, as well as EID weighcrate. We also saw their Afimilk lactometers used in their 12 places milking parlour.
University of Sassari: a) automatic feed bins b) methane chambers
The final visit was to the AGRIS research farm, where some of the pilot work has been done during TechCare. We saw their milk tank weighing system, their walk-over-weigh system (from the INRAe team), and the electronic milk meters installed in their milking parlour.
AGRIS research farm – Walk over Weigh
© all pictures TechCare
Although quite an intensive day of visits, it has been a real eye-opener on the various stages of sheep and goat farming systems in Sardinia and allowed to put in context some of the TechCare work carried out by our Italian colleagues.
