Going high tech: New animal facilities will benefit researchers

Right on the heels of celebrating a century of agricultural research, the Urbana campus dedicated animal facilities on the South Farms that administrators and faculty members hope will keep Illinois at the forefront of agricultural research and teaching well into another century.

The campus’s new beef and sheep units were dedicated at a ceremony on Sept. 1, just a little more than a year after the groundbreaking. The $10 million complex includes eight cattle barns, a sheep barn, an office building, a feed mixing unit and a house for students to live.

The new barns, some of which are still under construction but slated for completion during the next several weeks, will be home to approximately the same number of cattle (600-650) but slightly fewer sheep (approximately 100 total) than the old facilities. Although the new beef and sheep units, which comprise 53,000 sq. ft. and 19,000 sq. ft. respectively, are significantly larger than the old facilities, they will require less manual labor, said Neil Merchen, head of the department of animal sciences.

“The types of technology that we have available now for housing the animals, handling the manure and feeding the animals are a little bit different now than they were in 1920,” Merchen said. “The fact is, that even though the technologies are available now to do a lot of those things with a lot less hands-on effort, it’s very difficult to implement that technology in facilities that were designed 80-plus years ago.”

As part of a sustainable agriculture initiative, the complex features a $2 million manure-handling system that is designed to constrain odor, a concern raised by neighboring homeowners when the university announced plans to move the South Farms from the original site along St. Mary’s Road to the new site near South Race Street and Old Church Road in Urbana.

Slotted flooring in the barns will allow waste to drop through into pools of water beneath the buildings that will sweep it to enclosed storage tanks. The solids and liquids will be allowed to settle and separate so that the solids can be sent to a composting facility and the liquids pumped underground directly into nearby fields. By limiting the manure’s exposure to air and not spreading or spraying it above ground, the system is expected to greatly reduce if not eliminate the odor usually associated with large livestock facilities.

The new units will facilitate research into animal metabolism and nutrition through a computerized feeding system that will enable researchers to gather precise data about feed consumption and animals’ growth rates. Microchips in the animals’ ear tags will emit unique signals that will trigger the system to “record how much feed is there when each animal begins to eat and how much feed is there when they finish eating.” Merchen said.

Robert Easter, dean of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, said the new facilities are “a real step forward” and that modernizing the South Farms “is an opportunity for us to help realize the potential of (other research units) like the Institute for Genomic Biology.”

The beef/sheep unit is part of the first phase of the university’s six-phase South Farms modernization project, which is expected to cost $227 million and likely will take about another decade or more to complete.

Phase 1, which will cost an estimated $23.7 million and was funded by issuing bonds, also included the land acquisition and establishment of roads, sewers and other infrastructure to support the remainder of the project. The first phase also will include moving the swine facility and feed mill from their current sites just south of Assembly Hall to the new complex.

Easter said, “We’re anxious to move ahead,” but no date has been established for the next move, which will be contingent upon state funding.