Our newly built poultry research facility, comprised of two buildings, is located at the C. Oran Little Research Center, about 14 miles from campus.

The first building (Layer/Breeder Building) has two parts with a feed room between them. The first part has five identical rooms with each room capable of housing 160 laying hens (two hens per cage) or 80 broiler breeding hens (one hen per cage) and 24 adult male chickens (individually housed). The environment within each room is individually controlled and could be used for both cold and heat stress research.

The second half of the layer/breeder building is used as a floor pen room with 48 pens (8 x 6 ft.) pens (equipped with nest boxes as needed). Currently used for housing Heritage breeder flocks (Black Australorp, Rhode Island Red, and Barred Plymouth Rock) to provide hatching eggs for incubators in the classroom program throughout the state.

The second building (Nutrition Building) is divided into two halves with a feed room in between them. The first half of the building has three batteries consisting of a total of 324 pullet cages. This facility is capable of being used for different nutrition studies for pullets up to 16 weeks of age or broiler chickens up to 4 weeks of age.

The second half of the nutrition building is the floor pen room with eighty 6 x 6 x 6 ft. pens.

There are also several (up to 120 cages) moveable battery cages (Alternative Design) that can be moved into any of the environmental rooms for heat stress-related studies in broiler chickens.

In addition, broiler chicken studies can be conducted in the basement of our current building on campus. However, the basement facility will be replaced with a vivarium in the new Agricultural Research Building that is currently under construction (future home of our department; tentative move-in date of late fall 2026/early spring 2027). This new building would have two large rooms (BSL2) that would be dedicated to poultry research.