Animal Research Center
The Animal Science Beef Unit at the UK Animal Research Center located in Woodford County, approximately 15 miles from campus, provides state of the art facilities for conducting beef cattle production and management research. The Intensive Research building provides space for offices and laboratories, as well as 36 individually housed animals, a surgery suite, and animal handling and support, all with environmental control. Production facilities include 48 pens for feeding experiments, 60 Calan gates for individual feeding and 24 individual pens for more intensive sampling or feeding studies. A feed center for diet preparation and a handling facility for sorting and weighing animals surrounds the center on approximately 450 acres including 32, 7.5 acre pastures for grazing nutrition experiments.
The 350-ewe flock is located on 110 acres of the 1500-acre Animal Research Center. Sitting in the center of this acreage is a Lambing Barn, Nutrition Center, office Complex, and Student Quarters. The 336 x 48-foot Lambing Barn contains 12 pens, each with enough square footage to maintain 20 ewes and their twin lambs. Each pen opens to a 32 x 44-foot gravel "runout." These pens will also be used for drylot lamb feeding. Four bays of 4 x 5-foot lambing pens are located in the center of the barn. Each bay can house 16 ewes and their newborns. These pens can be transformed into 32 individual lamb feeding pens. The entire barn is wired for computerization and video recording.
The Swine Research Unit located at the UK Animal Research Center in Woodford County provides excellent facilities for swine nutrition research. The research complex consists of three major buildings: (1) a Headquarters-Gestation-Farrowing Unit, (2) a Nursery Unit, and (3) a Growing-Finishing Unit. These units are on separate sites within a biosecure area on the farm. At full capacity, the facilities will accommodate 120 working sows, with 12 farrowings every 2 weeks or 312 litters per year. Pigs will be weaned at 18-21 days of age. Crossbred Landrace x Yorkshire sows from the Princeton herd will be bred AI with semen from boars housed in a stud in a non-biosecure area of the farm or with purchased semen from a commercial boar stud. The facilities have pens for individual or group feeding of pigs. Approximately one-half of the pigs will be finished to market weight. Waste from the buildings will be stored in a central, above-ground storage area and later pumped to crop production areas of the farm for injection at appropriate times of the year.
