Science and Engineering group visit to Wiltshire College Lackham.

On the 12th July we arrived at Lackham to be greeted by Philip the farm manager.

The Lackham campus spans over 1700 acres of Wiltshire countryside, and is home to three working, commercial farms.

Home Farm is where we were introduced to the Holstein dairy cows and milking parlour, with milk sold to Cadbury!  Home Farm has a small poultry unit, a number of beef cattle and a pig unit. The remainder of the beef cattle, mainly Limousin and Hereford breeds, are found at the Great Lodge Farm nearby. Notton Farm, located behind Home Farm is home to the college’s sheep unit and deer park, and is where Lackham’s famous annual Lambing weekends take place each spring. As well as pastoral industries, students at Lackham are also involved in a range of arable cropping programmes, including wheat, oilseed rape, maize, barley and grass for silage.

No working farms would be complete without a range of modern machinery and tractors to compliment their farming practises, used and maintained by the students themselves. Machinery at Lackham includes tractors and trailers, harvesters, foragers, cultivators, spreaders, telehandlers and much more!

We all enjoyed the tractor ride as it trundled through the vast estate and we learnt a lot about farming today. Philip’s vast knowledge on farming was very impressive!!

Sally Ashton

 

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