Governor Bill and Vara Daniel Farm and Ranch is the College’s 770+ acre farm dedicated to aiding the needs of the Academic, Extension, and Research programs. The farm serves as a platform for high-quality, practical, hands-on teaching; impactful and novel research; and effective and engaging extension and Academic programs. To serve as a high-quality platform, the farm engaged in beef cattle production, dairy and meat goat production, forage production, natural resources management, and horticultural crop production in both field and greenhouse settings. These enterprises serve as foundational resources for research, extension, and teaching needs and therefore create opportunities for the dissemination of research data through academic courses and extension demonstrations.
New technologies such as remote sensing, ground sensing, robotics, drones, smartphone apps (e.g., VetLink/goat health technology) are being incorporated. New construction projects, including a Meat Science Laboratory, specialized greenhouses, a Veterinary Treatment Facility, and renovation of the existing poultry facilities, are in various stages of completion and planning.
Also, a GrowSafe residual feed intake (RFI) system is in place that automatically detects the amount of feed consumed by individual animals through electronic identification tags, thereby allowing for the identification of superior genetic lines through feed efficiency. Finally, the International Goat Research Center (IGRC) continues to use goats as models in the study of animal and human conditions, strengthening interdisciplinary collaborations.
