THE 'future of farming' was on display at Newton Rigg College's Low Beckside hill farm, as state-of-the-art technology used in its newly built sheep shed was demonstrated.

The college, the only one in the UK to have these facilities on a hill farm, hopes to use the technology to lead the way in sharing knowledge about new systems available to hill farmers which will improve efficiency significantly.

The newly built sheep shed and the custom-designed facilities within it, along with the machines, allow farmers to lamb, weigh, worm, administer medicine, shear and sort sheep, as well as recording all the data required in doing.

They have already proved extremely useful during this year's lambing season.

Matt Bagley, head of agriculture at Newton Rigg, said: "John Rowland, the farm manager here, and the students have already done most of the lambing here and the new facilities have made a massive difference to the health status of the ewes and the lambs.

"In the past we have had issues with foot health and lambs' joints, but that has been revolutionised with this.

"We used to have to lamb in five different places, now we can do it all in here."

Just short of 700 ewes were lambed in the sheep shed: a mixture of Swaledale and a cross-breed mule of Blue Faced Leicester and Beltex.

Mr Bagley said: "The young people here at this college have a passion for the industry and are the future of farming.

"Our job is to show them, and other farmers, this technology that is now available so they can decide what to use in the future, when efficiency will be extremely important."

Highlights of the demonstrations included the Combi-Clamp: a totally mobile multi-purpose unit which clamps sheep in a humane way for the farmer to deal with them. It includes a computer, which scans tags in the sheep's ear to record data including things like weight, age and breed.

This data can then be used by other machines, such as the variable weight worm gun, which administers the correct amount of antibiotic according to each individual sheep's size; and a gating system that can sort sheep into three different categories - set my the operator - according to details scanned from the tags.

All of these machines can be controlled by a mobile app.

First year student Ollie Raine, 17, said: "This is completely different to what we are used to at my home farm. The technology is a lot more advanced.

"I can definitely see myself using this in the future; I think most farmers will benefit quite a lot from the sort of technology we've got here.

"It is the future of farming and we are lucky to have this kind of thing so close to home."

The sheep shed officially opens on the evening of June 13. Anybody is invited to attend.