Raft Solutions Limited

This farmer-led project will trial the _Sustainability and Stability Index (SASI)_ -- a new tool designed to help beef farmers make better use of their data. SASI takes routine information such as cattle weights, body condition scores, health and treatment records, breeding performance and pasture condition, and turns it into simple traffic-light dashboar...

Fertility is a cornerstone of farm productivity, but outcomes vary throughout the year on livestock farms across the UK. While health, nutrition and management can be controlled, when it comes to using frozen AI semen, farmers are often left unsure if it will perform as expected. Semen quality can vary between bulls and can also be affected during transpo...

**Lameness in sheep** remains a significant challenge to productivity, resilience, and sustainability in UK agriculture, consistently ranking as a key priority for the sector. It has significant welfare, economic and antibiotic use implications as well as being a significant time and resource drain for farmers. This project will build on the previous succ...

"Cool Farm Manure" brings together RAFT Solutions, Keele University and Cool Farm, in the creation of a new manure management tool for the cattle industry in the Cool Farm Platform (CFP). The UK 25-year Environment Plan and Net Zero strategy underlies the need for agriculture to deliver greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions reductions while supporting biod...

Cattle and sheep are susceptible to coccidial infection of the alimentary tract with protozoan parasites belonging to the _Eimeria_ species. Eimeria infections are host-specific with a few pathogenic species within this genus associated with clinical disease; other co-infecting Eimeria species are often present but are not considered important pathogens. ...

Clinical mastitis is one of the major causes for antimicrobial use on dairy cattle farms. There is evidence to demonstrate that on-farm tests help motivate and engage farm staff with the control of mastitis, but continuous monitoring of farm protocols and procedures is required by the herd's vet. There are now many options for on-farm mastitis diagnostics...

The project will aim to produce a decision support system for farmers and vets that will use data from, and related to, individual animals (or the herd) to provide animal welfare information. Such evidence-based information will help in making optimised and timely and decisions related to animal health and output.

The NFU has set a goal of reaching net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across the whole of agriculture in England and Wales by 2040\. Morrisons have pledged to be the first supermarket to be directly supplied by 'net zero' carbon British farms by 2030\. Artificial Insemination (AI) is not traditionally used in beef cattle reproduction with less than 1...

Achieving net-zero carbon objective by 2040 is a priority requiring novel and innovative solutions to modernise the cattle husbandry sector. Although research has developed dietary supplements and medication, these are applied with a blanket approach and don't address individual needs of the animal and farmer. Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) targets ind...

Good fertility performance is the cornerstone of a profitable and sustainable livestock enterprise. In the international dairy and beef herd, optimum performance is achieved by maintaining a calving interval (CI) of 365 days. Every day CI increases \>365 days is estimated to directly cost the farmer ~GBP2.07/CAN$3.54/cow, or more for high yielding dairy c...

Coccidiosis in cattle and sheep is caused by infection of the alimentary tract with protozoan parasites called Eimeria _spp_. There are many species of _Eimeria_ but only a small proportion of these are commonly associated with clinical disease; other _Eimeria_ species may be present but are not considered important pathogens. Coccidiosis can affect anima...

This project will drive productivity in ruminant production systems by enhancing decision support with a precision livestock farming technology solution and system for the measurement of key biological indicators of herd nutritional and reproductive health. The project brings together Clarity Biosolutions' innovative lateral flow reader and test technolog...