So unfortunately my leg is still in trouble so I have get some physio on it, not ideal considering I already have loans coming out of my ears but it needs to be done.
On Wednesday, I got to visit the Crichton research farm run by SRUC, my project is based on this farm. It was great to see how the system actually works on the ground.
The miking cows are kept are kept indoors all year. They have been split into 4 groups, each group has a different diet: High forgage, low forage, by-products and home grown. The breakdown of these diets is constantly measured, such as their crude protein, dry matter percentage, fresh weight, etc.
The farm uses feeders that allow for the exact food and water intake of each cow to be monitored. Each cow has a tag that the feeder recognises, each feeder only allows one cow to eat from it at a time so the feeder measures the weight prior to the cow eating and then the weight once the cow has finished. The farm only has enough feeders to feed two groups at a time so the groups are rotated every three days.
The cows that are currently not on the feeder rotation (3 days then swapped) 
The cows that are currently on the feeder rotation (3 days then swapped) 
Getting to see how everything worked on the farm was extremely helpful and very enjoyable, I must admit I miss working directly with the livestock. While working directly with cows and sheep is extremely demanding it is extremely enjoyable. They never fail to make you feel less alone and needed.