Funding Awarded: £9998.00

Project Title: Efficient Load Scheduling for Dairy Farms with renewable energy provision

Collaborative Partners: Outer Blair Farm (Lead), The University of Strathclyde, RHD Scotland

Project Summary: This project is looking to provide recommendations for optimising electrical device usage on a farm with provision of renewable sources of energy and variable electricity tariffs, to minimise energy costs and reduce carbon emissions. Using specialised energy monitoring equipment for aggregate and individual potentially flexible loads, the project team will study energy demand from various pieces of electrical equipment in the farm and provide a detailed load scheduling recommendation, tailored to the farms specific needs and predicted or measured solar power generation.

Funding Awarded: £7700.00

Project Title: Innovative Whey Products

Collaborative Partners: Galloway Farmhouse Cheese (Lead), Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC)

Project Summary: This project involves the creation of a new Scottish Rivella protein drink and Gjetost cheese. Rivella is a soft drink from Switzerland which is produced from milk whey and Gjetost (or Norwegian Brown Cheese) is uniquely made from the whey of goat’s and cow’s milk.
The project will include research into the manufacture of these products using waste whey collected from the farm, research into locally available Scottish raw materials such as berries, research into methods to increase production time in processing the whey and product development by staff at SRUC Elmwood, with input of raw materials and ideas from the business.

Funding Awarded: £8228.13

Project Title: FastBreeders API

Collaborative Partners: Dourie Farming Company (Lead), Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC)

Project Summary: As the dairy sector is currently under immense pressure to transition towards net-zero, this project focuses on genomic selection to enable more sustainable approaches to manage dairy herd’s genetics fit for the environmental challenges ahead.
The project aims to develop an automated set of tools for enabling genomic selection for a wide range of production, fertility and feed intake phenotypes captured by the herds constituting Fastbreeders and represented by Dourie Farming Co Ltd.

Funding Awarded: £5,000.00

Project Title: Sheep Milk Processing Feasibility Study

Collaborative Partners: Morris-Eyton & Sons (Lead), Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC)

Project Summary: Sheep milk is currently a niche sector in the UK, consisting of an estimated 40 small scale sheep milking farms, producing 3-5 million litres (the equivalent of one large dairy farm).

This project will examine the costs of creating and running a large scale sheep milk herd, the infrastructure and operation costs of an innovative ambient temperature collection system and the innovation to the UK of drying sheep milk.

Funding Awarded: £9,949.00

Project Title: Caldbeck Caddy Solutions

Collaborative Partners: RE Hodgson & Son (Lead), The University of Strathclyde, Hubl

Project Summary: The farm involved in this project has a milk vending machine and pasteuriser. There is an opportunity to sell milk to hospitality venues across the county and so the project is looking to develop an innovative ambient temperature transport and dispensing solution for milk. The project includes the design of an innovative new product (Caldbeck Caddy), the design of which will decrease workloads in the hospitality venues and replace single use plastic.

Funding Awarded: £6,615.00

Project Title: Whey spirit marketing research

Collaborative Partners: Torpenhow Cheese Co Ltd (Lead), Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC)

Project Summary: This project will provide comprehensive market research for whey-based spirits in the UK and internationally and insights into the current trading whey-based spirits businesses. Once key markets have been identified, products sold within these markets will be researched and analysed. The final part of the project includes a feasibility study to derive potential spirits from whey by looking at analysis of spirit making requirements and distilling options for joint ventures, facilities and labour required.

Funding Awarded: £9999.70

Project Title: Coldzone

Collaborative Partners: Aqua 21(Lead), Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC), Agri-Epi centre

Project Summary: Milk cooling and cleaning of machinery uses both large quantities of fuel and electricity on dairy farms and processing plants. The aim of this project is to assess the feasibility of ozonated room temperature water replacing hot water washes to clean milk storage and pipes on dairy farms and processing plants. The lack of need for heating and an absence of chemical cleaners are the main novelties here and could lead to new products and processes from the adapted application of Aqua 21’s ozone generator to commercial dairy cleansing and processing.

Funding Awarded: £10,000.00

Project Title: Soil Moisture & Digital Challenge

Collaborative Partners: Dolphenby Farming Ltd (Lead), The University of West of Scotland

Project Summary: Buying an array of sensors to measure various soil conditions can be a heavy outlay for small companies. This project will look at cheaper ways of doing the same job for various soil conditions. Use of an aerial drone and ground sensor to carry out data mule duties in an agricultural setting, while gathering data to build up a digital twin of the key identified aspects for the farmer to be able to carry out their daily routine could be a key productivity tool.

Funding Awarded: £10,000.00

Project Title: What is the dry matter?

Collaborative Partners: Henderson Farming Ltd (Lead), The University of West of Scotland

Project Summary: A recent DDC workshop with sustainable farmers who are practicing grass pasture management techniques identified the need for more data to make better decisions. This project is a desk based study to determine the feasibility using a UAV and a hyperspectral camera to determine grass quality. A key component of the profitability of a farm is the quality of silage it can produce on site. This new process and data produced will allow the farmer to make better decisions within their grass management decision tree.

Funding Awarded: £10,000.00

Project Title: Plant segmentation and data pipeline

Collaborative Partners: The Grass & Seed Company (Lead), The University of West of Scotland, Hero Tech 8

Funding Awarded: £8,909.00

Project Title: Phytonutrients in regenerative fodder, milk and dairy products

Collaborative Partners: TJ Grindley & Son (Lead), SRUC

Funding Awarded: £9,242.81

Project Title: Dairy Beef Pneumonitor Project

Collaborative Partners: Castletown Estates (Lead), SRUC, Yan Vets

Funding Awarded: £9,938.00

Project Title: Learning about regenerative farming through novel technologies

Collaborative Partners: Golden Hooves (Lead) Vertical Vertical, Strathclyde University, SmartSTEMs

Funding Awarded: £10,000.00

Project Title: Automated udder scoring using machine learning

Collaborative Partners: Dourie Farming Company Ltd (Lead), SRUC

Funding Awarded: £10,000.00

Project Title: Project Luce: Efficient load scheduling for dairy farms with renewable energy provision

Collaborative Partners: Dourie Farming Company Ltd (Lead), Strathclyde University, RHD Scotland

Funding Awarded: £10,000.00

Project Title: Thermal detection and tracking of livestock

Collaborative Partners: Castletown Estates (Lead), University of West of Scotland

Funding Awarded: £9,992.00

Project Title: Filler Innovation Study

Collaborative Partners: What’s Fresh? (Lead), Strathclyde University

Funding Awarded: £7,978.33

Project Title: Validate improvement of milk quality and nutrient value from grazing mixed species swards

Collaborative Partners: Henderson Farming Ltd (Lead), SRUC

Funding Awarded: £7,853.00

Project Title: Monitoring growth of multi species swards for grazing dairy cows

Collaborative Partners: Dalfibble Farm (Lead), SRUC

Funding Awarded: £9,992.00

Project Title: Project Drum: Beckside farm energy balancing and surplus exporting potential under a community led scheme

Collaborative Partners: Beckside Farm (Lead), Strathclyde University

Project Summary: The goal of this project is to perform analysis on the renewable energy production from solar PV panels and hydro electric installed within the farm premises against the demand of a rotary parlour farm. This should result in a step forward to towards NetZero farming by incorporating renewable energy to try and minimise electricity use.

Funding Awarded: £9,992.00

Project Title: Littleton Farm: Exploring diverse renewables portfolio to accelerate net zero transition

Collaborative Partners: Littleton Farm (Lead), Strathclyde University

Project Summary: The goal of this project is to significantly improve energy efficiency of dairy farms with local energy generation by understanding energy demand on the farm and demand flexibilities and provide a set of recommendations such as load shifting, change of practices/processes, upgrade or retrofit and new investments. This should result in a step forward to towards NetZero farming by incorporating renewable energy to try and minimise electricity use.

Funding Awarded: £9,992.00

Project Title: Project Drum: Orton Grange farm energy management in a dairy farm with a highly diversified portfolio and RES surplus exporting potential under a community led scheme.

Collaborative Partners: Orton Grange (Lead), Strathclyde University

Project Summary: The goal of this project is to perform an analysis on renewable energy exporting potential from renewable energy sources including solar PV and wind against the demands of a housed energy intensive pedigree dairy farm milking using a traditional herringbone parlour with a number of diversified businesses including café, food hall, swimming pool and other retail activities.  This should result in a step forward to towards NetZero farming by incorporating renewable energy to try and minimise electricity use.

Funding Awarded: £9,992.00

Project Title: Project Drum: How End farm- community led RES surplus energy export potential and methane/ gas production for self consumption/export

Collaborative Partners: How End farm (Lead), Strathclyde University

Project Summary: The goal of this project is to perform an analysis on renewable energy exporting potential from renewable energy sources in order to inform business case models that will explore community energy sharing schemes, battery storage and export and EV charging.  This should result in a step forward to towards NetZero farming by incorporating renewable energy to try and minimise electricity use.

Funding Awarded: £9,740.00

Project Title: Biodiversity baseline for natural capital investment on dairy farms

Collaborative Partners: Dourie Farming Company Ltd (Lead), SRUC

Project Summary: Baselining Biodiversity is a project to demonstrate the nature restoration potential of dairy farms and explore public and private investment streams to finance action. It will demonstrate how biodiversity can be accounted for in a standardised way, and the costs of achieving this. This project will conduct a robust biodiversity baseline of Dourie Farming Company Ltd utilising an adapted method of The Statutory Biodiversity Metric. This metric has been developed to provide a standardised means of accounting for Biodiversity Net Gain in England. This approach utilises habitat as a proxy for biodiversity, and consequently to supplement this, the project team will develop a framework to assess birds through soundscape analyses, as a method for evidencing biodiversity condition. 

Funding Awarded: £8331.32

Project Title: The impact of nanobubble technology on dairy cattle drinking behaviour and production

Collaborative Partners: R Templeton & Co, WJ Wannop (joint lead), Aquapulse, SRUC

Project Summary: The impact of nanobubble technology on dairy cattle drinking behaviour and production. The project will measure water intake and cow behaviour before and after the deployment of the nanobubble technology. 

Funding Awarded: £8276.24

Project Title: Cow preference for actively cooled waterbeds

Collaborative Partners: M/S James McFadzean (Lead), Teemore Engineering, SRUC

Project Summary: Aquaclim, a cow cubicle waterbed which is actively cooled, has been designed to mitigate the effects of heat stress in housed dairy cows.

This project aims to assess dairy cow behaviour, welfare, and production when cows have access to Aquaclim waterbeds and provide evidence for the mitigating effects Aquaclim has on heat stress.

Funding Awarded: £9796.90

Project Title: Improving Dairy UHF Tag Adoption
Collaborative Partners: Milk Suppliers Association (Lead), SAOS, ScotEID, SRUC

Project Summary: This project aims to create a technology adapter to allow existing equipment to be adapted for use with UHF, minimising farm expenditure whilst still providing the full benefit. The intention is to provide compatibility with the widest range of equipment and vendors: for both UHF readers and existing farm machinery.

Funding Awarded: £9977.00

Project Title: CCI Photonics Bacteriology on Dairy Milkfilms

Collaborative Partners: Paragon Vets (Lead), CCI Photonics, SRUC

Project Summary: This is a pilot study using Photonic Bacteriology as a rapid diagnostic for mastitis and bacteria in milk.

Funding Awarded: £9815.00

Project Title: Dairy Slurry Drying Feasibility Study
Collaborative Partners: Messrs Millican (Lead), Farming Efficiencies, SRUC

Project Summary: Feasibility study into looking into the economic cost and value of drying the farms slurry and selling the product off farm as a fertiliser to other farms across the north of England

Funding Awarded: £9915.00

Project Title: Cow shed design optimisation
Collaborative Partners: Boreland Farming Partnership (Lead), Strathclyde

Project Summary: Future proof new dairy shed for cow and worker happiness. Current milk parlour and system is outdated and needs upgraded in order to increase milking, cow and worker efficiency. Aim to ensure that the new dairy shed is fit for the future and the next generation.

Funding Awarded: £9491.69

Project Title: Linking milk, butter and pastry quality

Collaborative Partners: Cumrue Farming Partnership (Lead), Edinburgh Butter Company, SRUC

Project Summary: Butter made from milk from cow’s grazing fresh grass is expected to be softer than butter made from cows fed conserved forages. Is this softer butter more or less suitable for use in the manufacture of baked pastries such as croissants?

Funding Awarded: £5744.00

Project Title: Use of soil biological tests to assess soil health improvements from regenerative agricultural practices

Collaborative Partners: Frank ‘Soil’ Smith Ltd (Lead), SRUC

Project Summary: Reducing the use of artificial Nitrogen used on dairy farms will be an important step towards reducing a farm’s carbon footprint. Therefore, understanding the availability of biologically available nitrogen and the wider functioning of the soil will help farmers move towards more sustainable systems. The objective of the project is to explore the efficacy of the Haney soil test, as the Haney Soil Test gives soil test results that show water extractable nitrogen and water extractable carbon.

Funding Awarded: £8958.40

Project Title: Quality attributes of Mossgiel Milk
Collaborative Partners: Mossgiel Ltd (Lead), SRUC

Project Summary: The perfect cappuccino and latte coffee requires milk that produces the right consistency and texture of froth when steamed. This project aims to understand how milk ‘frothiness’ is affected by both milk composition (how the milk is produced) and milk processing, with the ultimate aim of scaling-up the production of the best barista milk.

Funding Awarded: £9928.00

Project Title: Where milk comes from: the potential use of AR in educating farm visitors

Collaborative Partners: Messrs J McMiken (Lead), Vertical Vertical, Strathclyde

Project Summary: This feasibility study will assess the potential for implementing augmented reality (AR) in a farm shop to enhance customer engagement and education. The study will explore how AR technology can be used to visually connect customers with the farm’s milk production process. The objective is to evaluate the technical, financial, and operational viability of this idea, determining whether it can be successfully implemented within the existing farm shop framework. A design specification will be created to establish the visitor experience.