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The Journey Of A Science Idea

The Department of Primary Industries (DPI) Ellinbank invites the community to a special seminar on Wednesday, July 8, 2009

By Department of Primary Industries - 1st July 2009 - Back to News

About the journey of an idea from ‘light bulb moment’ to the creation of technology designed to help farmers measure pastures and improve profitability.

DPI Technical Officer, Ivor Awty, said pasture is regarded as the cheapest forage cows can eat, which means there is a strong relationship between pasture consumed and profitability.

"Eighty per cent of pasture utilisation is now possible with supplements only being fed to top up energy requirements not provided through pasture itself," Mr Awty said.

"Naturally, no farmer wants to underfeed high production cows leading to a tendency for overfeeding supplements.

After doing the maths, Mr Awty realised farmers could potentially be wasting thousands of dollars in supplementary feed; and what they needed was a quick and automatic device for taking the guesswork out of pasture measurement.

The ‘light bulb moment’ led to a fully fledged development project for the Ellinbank Automatic Pasture Reader (APR), which is now on the verge of full commercialisation.

Mr Awty will be presenting the seminar and demonstrating how the APR works at DPI Ellinbank Centre, 1301 Hazeldean Road on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm.

This presentation is part of the DPI Ellinbank Seminar Series being held on a regular basis over 2009. Speakers are selected to provide the latest information on topics of relevance to communities and industries across Gippsland.

If you would like more information about future topics, please contact DPI Ellinbank on 5624 2222.

Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: news@gippsland.com

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