Farm Business – Virtual Farm Tours – get your fingers running – Teagasc

April 21, 2024

Imagine just opening up your computer to ‘visit’ farms from across the country and beyond – now you can with Teagasc’s online virtual farm tours. Teagasc agricultural machinery and milking machine specialist Francis Quigley tells us why they are particularly valuable when planning new facilities.

Virtual farm tours are having a major impact in the field of farm building design. Viewed on your phone or computer, they are a high-tech way for farmers and advisors to ‘visit’ different farms without leaving their home.

We first started building a portfolio of virtual tours due to Covid restrictions preventing people from visiting the farms in person. The value of these virtual tours quickly became apparent and they are now an essential tool not only for advisors and farmers, but also for agricultural teachers and students.

Most farmers undertake a major construction project, such as a milking parlour, once or perhaps twice per generation. Other buildings, such as a calf barn or freestall barn, can last 15 to 25 years before being replaced.

Ideas

Farmers sometimes view new construction projects in isolation, rather than as part of the entire farm, and may decide on a design based solely on the available land area. Gathering ideas from other designs and layouts is a very important part of the design process.

It is very important to get out and visit other farms at an early stage. You’ll gain inspiration for your design and discover what might work on your farm and, just as importantly, what might not.

Organizing personal visits is not always easy. First you need to identify farms worth visiting, then arrange a time and date that suits both you and the host. Then you may have to travel a long distance to get there. You often have to allow a full day for each visit. And even then you might only have an hour or two on the farm.

Francis Quigley, pictured above, started building a portfolio of virtual farm tours during the COVID-19 pandemic

Another challenge is that you may not know what to look for during the visit. Still, you have to remember everything you’ve seen. Not that easy. What you take away from a farm visit, real or virtual, depends on where you are in your decision-making process. You won’t be thinking about drainage systems if you are still deciding between a conventional or robotic milking system.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could find a farm nearby that you can visit as often as you need? Assuming, of course, that the farm has everything right. These virtual tours help farmers see how the best-planned farms are set up, how they arrange different elements such as gates, coops, doors and even drains, and how to make better use of space and resources.

Share ideas and work together on better designs

Advisors use these tours to provide smart advice based on what works well for other farms. An advisor and a farmer viewing virtual farm tours together is a great way for everyone involved to share ideas and work together to design better, more efficient farms for the future.

James Mullane, a Teagasc Business and Technology Advisor based in Co. Tipperary, said: “Even when I’m on farm visits I find that people often find it difficult to visualize what a plan or idea could look like.

“When you describe something, you can never be sure how the other person understands your idea. I often find that I have an initial meeting on location and then a follow-up meeting via Zoom.

“When describing an idea or layout, I regularly open one of the virtual tours and take the customer through the design on the screen,” James explains.

“We can jump from one tour to another and look at elements that would work well. It’s just as important to show them design features that wouldn’t work in their situation and explain why.”

How the tours work

Teagasc Poultry consultant Rebecca Tierney has used the virtual tours in her work. She said: “Due to biosecurity restrictions, it can be difficult to access poultry units for training and education. By using the virtual tours, students can gain insight into the flow of a poultry unit, look at the layout, the equipment used and the size of the units.”

The virtual farm tours are mainly used by students of the DkIT level 5 poultry course. This is often the first time that students come into contact with the poultry sector.

“The tours are excellent because they give us access to poultry units without going there. It eliminates biosecurity risks and makes the lectures more attractive to students.” Rebekah said.

“The tours include maps and videos of the various elements such as egg belts and manure belts in the unit. The photos allow me to show the unit in more detail in terms of equipment and the unit fully stocked with birds.

“Even with a large group in the class, everyone can clearly see what I’m talking about. When a large group is on site looking at a small element, people in the back of the group can often miss the finer details,” she explains.

20 virtual tours available

There are currently 20 different virtual tours available on the Teagasc website. These include a range of conventional herringbone parlors, rotary parlors and robotic parlors. There are also a number of sheep, cattle and poultry sheds and a range of calf sheds available which you can tour via Virtual Farmyard Tours at teagasc.ie.

The tours have proven extremely popular and are attended more than 35,000 times by people looking for ideas and inspiration for their project.

A fully dimensioned map is included with each of the tours. Videos and photos of key design elements are also included. I have a keen eye for detail, but I often find that I see design elements in the virtual tours that I missed during a real farm visit.

A very big advantage of using the virtual tour is that it produces a very lively and constructive conversation about the project.

Now that the client can better visualize the elements within the proposed design, they feel much more confident in giving an opinion on what they like, what they don’t like, and what they think will work for their business. This makes for a much more useful and productive meeting with the design team.

View the virtual farm tours here.

This article first appeared in the March/April edition of Today’s Farm. Click here for more from this publication.