Water Management

I attended a farm walk with Alan Keys and the Ballinderry Rivers Trust a while back to look at a dirty water swale system. What got my attention was the comfrey plant. Alan advised I buy a book by Lawrence Hills, he is the guru on comfrey. This powerful plant can utilise up to 2.5L of water a day.

Great visit at the Water Innovation Network farm walk today. Took the kids out when we got back to check what we could find in one of our burns. And delighted with what we found! Every category covered: mayfly, cased caddis, shrimp, beetles, caseless caddis, leeches, worms... I had always assumed t

This shrimp is the Rambo of the waterways. It's a hardy wee thing that can withstand a reasonable amount of most forms of pollution and enrichment. You can expect to find them in all but the most polluted of waterways. They'll be hanging out under the stones. If there is some nutrient pollution the

The Water Innovation Network (EIP-Agri) is running a series of events on Water Friendly Farming (Book here). They include guidance on how to check whether a waterway is healthy. Similar to the advice from Becky about soil health - one of the simplest ways to check water quality is to look at what

This is a handy guide from NIEA for assessing river quality, worth a wee poke under stones to see what bugs are about.

The UK farming industry has managed to reduce its antibiotic use by 55% since 2014, but far greater reductions are still needed. Even still antibiotic resistant bacteria has been found in UK rivers prompting calls on the UK government for an urgent ban on the routine use of antibiotics on healthy fa

We took a tour of the new swale systems on a dairy farm outside Cookstown today. The system is a way of capturing and recycling nutrients and minerals that would otherwise be lost. The system is based on simple principles but a lot of thought has gone into the design. First of all clean spring

Comfrey can be found growing wild around the countryside. It’s a brilliant absorber of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium so a very useful plant in situations where we need to mop up nutrients before they get into waterways – for example where dirty water is running off a farm yard towards a ri

Yesterday a group of farmers visited a system that is being trialled by the Water Innovation Network on a Dairy Farm in the Upper Ballinderry catchment. It's a simple system of swales to deal with dirty water coming off the farmyard. The farmer had previously got a quote for installing an Integra

Does anyone know of a quick and easy way of testing water quality thats available to farmers in NI? We regularly see the kind of brown froth residue in the river here and would like to figure out whether it is septic tank discharge, slurry or something else.

Hi folks, I'm a farm advisor for the Ballinderry Rivers Trust. We are an environmental charity dedicated to the conservation and enjoyment of the Ballinderry River. One project we are currently working on is creating nature based water management systems to clean up dirty water from farm yards. The