Document Actions
Facilities
Animal Science Building
The Department of Animal Science moved into its current building in 1982. There are fourteen research laboratories in the Animal Science Building including physiology, food science, dairy microbiology, non-ruminant nutrition, ruminant nutrition and general nutrition. In addition, the building houses a computer-data processing complex; 3 classrooms seating approximately 220, 108 and 40 students, respectively; a student autotutorial room; and one large and two small conference rooms.
FACILITIES
There are 15 Animal Science-related facilities, which are used for teaching, research and extension.
Animal Science Arena - click for Reservation Form
In 1988, the Department of Animal Science dedicated a new livestock arena built to replace the arena in the old Animal Husbandry building that was demolished to make way for the Noble Research Center. The new arena is a state of the art structure with 46,318 square feet. The facility includes a 92’ x 192’ (17,664 sq. ft.) arena floor with adjacent chairback seating for 779 people. It also includes excellent animal working areas, office and kitchen space, and a 1,675-sq. ft. classroom. Most importantly, the superb sound and lighting systems make the facility excellent for both teaching programs and special events.
Purebred Beef Center
Purebred beef cattle are maintained at two locations: the Beef Cattle Center, located on 160 acres three miles west of Stillwater on State Highway 51, and the “purebred range” consisting of 1,400 acres of native grass and 350 acres of Old World Bluestem improved pasture on the north side of Lake Carl Blackwell. The purebred herd has a current inventory of approximately 300 mature cows representing five breeds: Angus, Hereford (horned and polled), Brangus, Limousin and Simmental. The office includes a sale pavilion and student dormitory. A show barn houses 12 individual pens and outside pens where cattle are maintained for class, sale and show purposes. PBC also has a working barn where general cattle management activities are performed and the Progeny Test Barn, which is used primarily for nutrition research by various faculty, and 2,000 acres of native pasture and improved grasses. These animal facilities are used extensively in our teaching program and related activities, including some extension activities with numerous tour groups, etc. The Center employs 10-20 OSU students per year and holds the annual Cowboy Classic Production Sale. The Beef Center maintains a reputation of functional, high performance cattle, both in and out of the show ring, with recent winnings including having the national champion Angus sale bull and reserve champion pen of 3 Angus bulls at the 2009 National Western Stock Show.
Beef Cattle Breeding Facility – North Lake Carl Blackwell Range
(operated jointly with plant and soil science department)
The beef cattle breeding research program is conducted at the North Lake Carl Blackwell Range that consists of approximately 2,700 acres. Native pasture and hay meadow constitutes about 2,500 acres with the remainder in Bermudagrass. The unit supports approximately 240 cows. There are two working facilities with scales in the area. In addition, there is a calving barn and storage buildings in the headquarters area.
Range Cow Research Center – South Lake Carl Blackwell Range
(operated jointly with plant and soil science department)
The South Range consists of approximately 3,200 acres of native range (15% wooded) and 250 acres of bermudagrass. The range area is divided mostly into 100 to 160 acre pastures. Most of the acreage surrounds Lake Carl Blackwell. Pastures are in four main tracts, 640 acres, about 600 acres north of the lake, 380 acres in a single pasture and the remainder comprising the “headquarters” area. The herd is comprised of 300 beef cows (Hereford and Hereford-Angus), 10 bulls and 65 replacement heifers. About 90 cows calve in the fall and the remainder in the spring. Cattle inventories of both research leaders (Lalman and Wettemann) are combined and selected for projects according to most appropriate breed, age, weight, condition, etc. Headquarters facilities consist of a 60 X 72 ft metal building containing electronic cattle scales, squeeze chute, restrooms, tool and equipment storage and office. Excellent and extensive cattle holding and sorting pens are integrated with the building. Pens also permit limited cattle feeding experiments. Two individual feeding barns, each with feed storage areas and 42 individual covered stalls, are located in this area. Portable cattle scales and portable sorting facilities are located about 1.5 miles from the headquarters to permit limited weighing and sorting without driving cattle to the main facility. The Highway 86 area has an individual feeding barn identical to those at the headquarters, covered cattle scales and working facilities and limited, but adequate, permanent cattle sorting facilities. The 380-acre pasture located just west of this area is used only for temporary grazing of cattle because of lack of any handling facilities. Section 32 has one permanent holding pen for small groups of cattle. Weighing is conducted with portable scales and corral equipment. This area is used primarily for less intensive studies because of its lack of facilities. In addition to studies on nutrition and reproduction, cooperative studies with researchers in Veterinary Medicine and Entomology are conducted.
Willard Sparks Beef Research Center
The Sparks Center is a development through an investment of more than $2.3 million dollars, dedicated in 1998. It is the finest beef research and educational facility in the country, and it is a great benefit in fostering our research, teaching and extension programs to better serve the beef industry. Research is conducted with cooperative efforts with the College of Veterinary Medicine to provide excellent hands-on training, work and clinical experience for many OSU students. One of the first research trials was partially funded by a grant from the Oklahoma Beef Industry Council to study genetic markers associated with marbling in beef cattle. Two early studies investigated the use of unusual by-product feeds and low roughage diets in formulating feeding strategies for drought management programs.
Dairy Cattle Center
The Oklahoma State University dairy herd consists of approximately 100 registered Holstein cows that average 70 pounds of milk with a 3.9% fat test. The milking facility is a double-six herringbone parlor with automated cow identification, milk yield recording and milking unit detachers. The brick building that previously housed the milking parlor serves as a research and calf raising barn. There are 92 stanchion or tie stalls that can be used to individually feed research animals or as individual calf raising pens. This building also contains 13 box stalls. Individual stalls also exist for raising calves in the east wing. The former Bull Barn currently provides stalls for individually feeding or penning cows who may need isolation or attention for health purposes, or which may be used in embryo transfer or cooperative work with the Veterinary College. A calving shed (50’ x 16’) was recently completed. The Dairy Center encompasses approximately 300 acres of pasture; an additional 80 acres of tillable land nearby is devoted to raising sorghum for silage. Research currently being conducted at the Dairy Cattle Center includes ruminant nutrition, reproductive physiology, and health and well-being of dairy cattle. Also of notable mention, the OSU Dairy Science Club at OSU was established in 1924 and is the oldest existing Dairy Science Club in the United States.
Equine Center
The Equine Center is located on approximately 60 acres adjacent to the Animal Science Arena. It’s home to OSU Sonny’s Slider, a nationally recognized Quarter Horse. His offspring have earned a total of 1,299 AQHA performance points with total incentive earnings reaching more than $21,000. In 2001, Bullet was one of three finalists for the MD Barns Silver Spur Award presented by AQHA. This award honors those American Quarter Horses that have made a significant impact on the lives of others and have created a favorable perception of the breed. The Equine Center currently has 65 head of primarily Quarter Horses in its inventory. Of this total, 22 are broodmares over the age of three, 4 geldings over the age of three, 7 two-year-old fillies and geldings, 16 yearling fillies and geldings and 3 breeding age stallions. These horses are used for a variety of activities encompassing research, teaching and extension. The goal is for every horse to be used in some activity. All broodmares and stallions have been secured through donations or raised from donated stock. Each year, some of the mares are bred to the top sires in the industry, again on a donation basis, in an effort to raise high quality horses as replacements, for use in class and for sale. The center consists of a 25-stall barn constructed in a double breezeway configuration. This barn also has a tack room, feed room and double wash rack. Other buildings include a 30’ x 85’ concrete block building that serves as a breeding shed and office, a 30’ x 50’ pole barn with three 16’ x 16’ stallion stalls and 10,000 square feet of exercise paddocks. The 60 acres includes six native and bermudagrass pastures that range in size from 5 to 20 acres. An additional 100 acres off site are used for grazing, production and additional acreage for producing hay.
Poultry Research Station
The Poultry Research Station currently houses considerable research capability for supporting both basic and applied research. Private funds have been very helpful in recent renovation efforts. Overall, the center contains 172 floor pens (132 in remodeled buildings) that may be used for applied broiler, layer, turkey and breeder studies. Additional facilities include a poultry processing laboratory; computer laboratory; sample handling-laboratory; two large scale environmental chambers (1,680-bird capacity) and 84 calorimetry-environmental chambers. Poultry research has focused on energetic, environmental distress and growth modeling research. The large scale environmental chamber may be used to generate specific cycling ambient temperature-relative humidity environments for applied-basic experiments. The 84 open circuit respiratory units equipped for real-time physiological monitoring are divided between 3 chamber rooms for poultry and a new complex for swine. The units are used in basic thermobalance studies for the determination of bird heat production, evaporative cooling, nonevaporative cooling, respiration rate, apparent respiration efficiency, body temperature, bird heat content, protein and fat deposition pattern, electrocardiogram, blood pressure and numerous metabolic variables determined in blood samples obtained via indwelling catheters. Body temperature, heart rate, electrocardiogram and blood pressure observations are made using a radio telemetry system with data recording every 1.5 minutes for all birds. This is a one-of-its kind facility in the world. Similarly, 24 environmental chambers have recently been added to accommodate pigs, up to 40 kg.
Sheep Farm
The sheep farm is one of the oldest structures on campus (built in 1930), and is located on approximately 80 acres just west of the campus. The farm consists of 3 breeds: Suffolk, Hampshire and Dorset – all competitive on a national level. In 2003, OSU had the record-setting high sell of a Dorset at public auction, bring $13,000. OSU sells their sheep privately and at auctions across the country, providing seedstock for commericial and seedstock producers; they also sell club lambs for show prospects. The farm is in bermudagrass pasture, of which 36 acres is overseeded in the fall with small grains for winter pasture. The facilities at the sheep farm include the following: Main Sheep Barn (built in 1930); North Sheep Barn (previously a swine barn-used for sheep since 1980); West Barn (built in 1967). Working facilities such as chutes, foot bath, cutting gates and turning cradles are available at the North Sheep Barn. The purebred sheep flock is primarily used in teaching several Animal Science courses as well as demonstrations and judging for 4-H and FFA schools and field days.
Swine Research & Educational Center
The Swine Center was dedicated in 2004 as a new, total confinement facility that features modern waste and odor management technologies as well as an indoor facility for swine judging. It is located on approximately 80 acres of land southwest of the campus, and it houses 130 sows of which half are commercial sows for nutrition research, and half are purebred Yorkshire and Hampshire sows. The herd is known for its outstanding purebreds with numerous national show champions through the years. OSU still holds the record for the highest selling purebred boar at auction by a college or university, when in 2001 they sold a Yorkshire boar for $70,000 at a National Type Conference. The OSU herd will show and sell breeding swine at 3-5 national shows each year. The center also uses Animal Science student employees and has housing for 2-4 students. In addition, approximately 100 different visits dot the calendar each year by 4-H, FFA and collegiate livestock teams.
Nutrition Physiology Research Center (NPRC)
The NPRC is a 15,000-sq. ft. building located about two miles west of Stillwater near the Beef Complex. It provides a combination of controlled environment and open-air facilities for intensive research with cattle, swine and sheep. The unit is staffed with a herd manager, and student labor is used to offer experience to students. The center has the following facilities: 16 metabolism stalls used frequently for cow-calf pairs in physiology studies, small surgery room, dry and wet labs, and cattle working areas with chutes, stalls and pens. Recently, remodeling of the previous Live Animal Evaluation Center has been initiated to retrofit the building as an NPRC Annex. It is located next to the NPRC. It is currently equipped with 10 pens on slats. The swine reproductive physiology programs have been moved from the NPRC to the Annex. Additional remodeling has been started to create a surgery room and an isolation room for physiological monitoring. The current remodeling provides swine pens on slats, a surgery room and an isolation room.
Oklahoma Beef Inc. (OBI)
Oklahoma Beef Inc. is a central bull testing station located eight miles west of Stillwater on Highway 51 that was established in 1973. More than 1,000 bulls are tested on an annual basis for post-weaning performance, and they represent as many as 13 breeds and more than 30 testing groups, which makes it the second largest central bull test station in the United States. OBI markets more than 300 bulls annually in two sales held in March and October each year at the test station. Facilities include seven open-fronted bull testing barns for breeders to use for gain testing as follows: for Brangus, Angus, Hereford, Polled Hereford, Limousin, Charolais , Beefmaster, Simmental, Gelbvieh and Red Angus member breeders. Sale barn and sale pens exist on property, as well as office space and working facilities. Non-member breeds (Salers and Chiangus) use any existing facilities available for their gain tests. Oklahoma Beef Inc., is governed by a board of directors and officers representing member breeds. Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service faculty assist in the advisement of test station activities and summarization of performance data collected through 112-day gain tests.
OSU Feed Mill
The current OSU feed mill was built in 1969 and employs 2-3 OSU students every year. The feed mill manufactures feed and mineral for all the OSU Animal Science units, as well as some research diets for Panhandle State University and West Texas A&M University. Approximately 100 feed ingredients go into more than 2,500 tons (5 million pounds) of feed annually.
Plant and Soil Science/Animal Science Research Range
Land resources assigned to the Departments of Plant and Soil Science and Animal Science and located west of the CTER are used for range management/livestock management research. The area is predominantly tall-grass prairie and is dedicated to the study of grazing management systems, prescribed burning and range livestock nutrition. Area management is coordinated by researchers in the Departments of Plant and Soil Science and Animal Science. Research is conducted by two range scientists, a range nutritionist and an agricultural economist. Since 1983, numerous small-scale studies on seasonal livestock nutrition and forage use, vegetation and livestock response to intensive grazing management, and eastern red-cedar control have been conducted. Currently, a large portion of the area is dedicated to the study of the impacts of grazing system and stocking rate on vegetation stability, livestock production and enterprise economics. Twelve 50-60 acre units representing two replications of two grazing systems each at three stocking rates are involved in the study.
