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Animal Research Center
Beef
Unit
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.
Sheep Unit
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.
Swine
Unit
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.
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